


Voodooized

by loghain



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dark, M/M, Minor Character Death, Slash, Smut, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:54:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 36,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loghain/pseuds/loghain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about Sebastian Moran, and the man who saved and ruined him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Prospective Employer

**Author's Note:**

> I have a headcanon appearance for Sebastian Moran in the BBC series: Craig Parkinson. Google him.

“It’s not as if I did it on purpose,” Sebastian groans, hands tucked tightly into the pockets of his jacket. He can feel his sister giving him among the most disbelieving of looks. He really doesn’t need this. He’s been out of the army six months now, and okay, maybe he should’ve gotten the whole “here’s what happened” conversation over with _all_ of his family but Augusta is just really difficult to talk to.

Even trying to explain that he was asked to retire thanks to concerns about his injuries somehow becomes his fault, as if he should’ve tried harder to avoid being mauled or shot at or taken at knifepoint. He’s only grateful that he doesn’t have to tell them about the fact that there were a hundred thousand behind-the-scenes reasons to get rid of him. They’d just been looking for a good excuse to get him out of there.

He wishes she wouldn’t grill him about it in the middle of a Greggs, though. He scuffs the tiled floor with the toe of his boot and looks down at her just in time to see her cock an eyebrow and say, “Yeah, you did, Seb.” She huffs and sighs, and turns her head to the front of the shop as a stout man pays for a pasty and leaves, and the queue all dutifully shuffles forward half a foot. 

“All right, maybe I did,” Sebastian says, just because there’s no point in justifying himself to her, and he doesn’t bother reminding her that he hates being called Seb, either. He much preferred it when he was in the SAS and everyone called him _sir_ or _Colonel Moran_. No more of that now he’s just a plain civilian - though it’s occasionally useful to say, “I’m an SAS officer!” when the queues are taking too long. Like now. But Augusta wouldn’t like that.

“You’ve honestly not changed a bit since you were 17 and went off to join the bloody army in the first place,” she mutters, hitching her bag onto her shoulder. Sebastian rolls his eyes and reaches into the open fridges to pick up a can of diet cola, and he asks, “Do you want anything?” but Augusta just shakes her head and continues, saying, “You were always so irresponsible. Careless. Dad thought that being a serving man might make you ‘straighten up and fly right’.”

Sebastian chuckles then, because Augusta always did do a stunning impression of their father - probably because she’s a good deal like him, including being named after him. Augustus Moran didn’t think he was going to get a son. It was five years after Augusta that Sebastian screamed his way into the world, and he thinks the fact he wasn’t the one named after a parent was fate being indicative of his future as a disappointment to the family.

“I knew better. You’ve always been a twat.”

“You’re lovely, you are, sister dear,” Sebastian mutters. Never mind that he served for eighteen years without incident. Once a failure always a failure. They finally get to the front of the queue and Sebastian thumps the can down on the counter, staring at the pastries and various foods lying under the hot glass as he fishes out his wallet. _What an interesting life I lead,_ he thinks. _This is the first time I’ve left the flat in a week._  

“I’ll get this one, Seb,” Augusta offers, and Sebastian ignores her and says, “Sausage roll, please,” and hands over money for his drink and food before she’s even got her purse out.  She sighs, irritable and audible, and orders, “Just a Cornish pasty, thanks” to the unfortunate man behind the counter.

A few years ago Sebastian would’ve make a crack about “Looks like your future is going far, mate” but now he’s the one living in a pokey council flat with too many holes in without any prospects because he hasn’t any qualifications and was only ever good at shooting things. At least the prat in overalls serving warm food for a living is making, well, a living.

He accepts the change with the sausage roll, tucks his drink into his pocket with his wallet and gestures the food threateningly at his sister whilst saying, “I’m poor, but I can afford a bloody sausage roll, you know.” 

“I was trying to be nice,” Augusta mutters, and Sebastian sneers at her.

“No, you weren’t. You were doing what Dad does, which is a thinly veiled criticism of my life through kind gestures. Like when I was fourteen and a little chubby, so he got me a bicycle.” He shakes his head and pushes his hair away from his brow, ruffling the fluffy ends of his hair. It’s not long, but he’s not had a haircut in some time, and his hair hangs straight and limp over his ears, with a fringe that would be better suited to someone much younger. 

“Why don’t you cut that short? You look ridiculous,” Augusta chimes, and Sebastian shoves the sausage roll into his mouth to stop himself from saying something too-sharp that’ll make her upset and then he’ll be the bad guy, again, as he always is when he offends his sister’s delicate feminine sensibilities. 

Around a mouthful of pastry and meat he vocalises, “Goodbye, Augusta,” and turns his back on her, walking down the street in an entirely different direction to her. He’s not sure where he’s going. His flat isn’t this way, after all, and it’s only after he’s reached it that he realizes his feet have carried him to the employment board, tacked up inside a plastic case and stuck to the outside wall of a brightly coloured employment agency. 

“Right,” Sebastian mutters to himself, and scratches the side of his head as he observes the long list of open opportunities. There’s nothing for him, of course. He doesn’t know why he’s looking, other than to actually feel as if he’s doing something with his life. He takes another bite of sausage roll. All the positions available are far beyond him, and honestly, in the past four months since he’s actively been trying to work he’s thrown away three jobs.

Shooting things really is all that Sebastian’s good at. Leading a team under pressure, too. He’s good at all the things he’s no longer allowed to do, because the powers that be don’t want him there anymore. He’s not a people person, nor is Sebastian particularly handy with math, and he’s too lazy in a shop situation. He needs pressure. Excitement. He needs a gun in his hand and people to shout at.

_Screw the ugly bastards_ , Sebastian thinks moodily as he tears his eyes away from the employment board. _I didn’t much like being a bloody colonel anyway._  

Sebastian tosses the half-finished sausage roll into the first bin that’s handy and travels back down the street, meandering off down other roads to make his way slowly back to the grey, uniform block of council flats where he lives. He lights a cigarette as he goes, hand-rolled and made from the cheapest tobacco because he can’t afford anything better, and as he inhales lungful after lungful of toxic smoke he can’t help but bitterly contemplate, _I didn’t smoke even half this much in service._  

There’s something about his sister - his family in general - that just doesn’t lend him any good feelings of any sort. It just makes him pretty miserable. Even before his discharge, when he was home to visit, they had a knack for bringing him down. 

He flicks the dog-end of the cigarette out of his fingers as he approaches his building, and searches through his pockets for another, this time just holding it between his lips until he reaches the bottom of the stairs. Sebastian stares up them resentfully. He served for eighteen years and he can’t even live in a place that has a working elevator.

Lighting his second cigarette, he makes the march up, hands in his pockets as he puffs on it. Halfway up he starts taking the steps two at a time until he finally reaches his floor and lets himself into his horrible little flat.

It’s coming up for three in the afternoon at this point, and Sebastian stubs out his cigarette on the little plate he’s using for a makeshift ashtray, picks up the day-old newspaper from his seat on the sofa and collapses down, making a decision to read it through, cover to cover, ads and all.

_What a thrilling life I have_ , Sebastian thinks again, pausing only a moment longer than he has to on the page three tits. “Fake,” he asserts out loud, before remembering there’s no one around to hear him, and then he continues reading.

All of a sudden he’s waking up far too early; the singular window in his flat has daylight shining in, but it’s not _daylight_ daylight, it’s morning light. Sebastian’s watch (which he has to tap rather vigorously to make work - it’s cheap, digital and the battery is dying) makes it around 6:30, and he moans unhappily, rubbing a hand over his eyes and sitting up straight. His shoulders crack and groan in protest, unsurprisingly.

_I can’t believe I fell asleep on the sofa._ Sadly, this isn’t the first time it’s happened. A life of very little seems to mean that Sebastian falls asleep too much, too often, and for too long. He shoves the paper off his lap and stands up straight, unzipping his ugly coat with too many pockets, emptying them before he takes it off, including setting down the coke can, untouched from yesterday. 

“Bollocks,” Sebastian mutters, scratching his thigh through his jeans, before he decides that he’ll have a shower and then just go back to bed - his actual bed, of course, instead of the cramped pathetic excuse for a sofa. 

He strips off lazily on his way to the bathroom, naked except for socks by the time he reaches into the bath and turns the taps, feeding the shower attached to them. He removes his socks whilst he’s waiting for the shower to heat up, but then he catches his reflection in the mirror and frowns. 

His head goes out the top of the mirror; it’s too low on the wall to match the too low sink - too low even if he were a man of average height. As it happens, Sebastian is 6’4”, so everything about this bathroom generally doesn’t cooperate with him. He scratches the four day beard covering his jaw, and then touches the three stripes down his chest, old scars from a rather curious incident with a tiger that left him the victor but with only one nipple; an old injury by now, but the messiest. 

Sebastian thought it was a great story to tell women, at first, but then it turns out that not many people believe him when he tells them that he fought and killed a tiger. Even if he shows the scars. 

He doesn’t have the prettiest complexion at all. Pale and pasty and undeniably English, with odd tan marks in all the wrong places and a hundred scars, Sebastian is soldier all over, and not the sort that gets picked to do charity calendars. 

Shaking his head, Sebastian pulls his gaze away from his body and clambers awkwardly into the bath, hunching over under the shower for a few minutes before he gives up and wrestles the shower head from the holder, manually directing the spray through his hair and over his body. He’s too tall for everything in this flat. 

Cramped space was never an issue in the army because that was how it was. Everything was regulation. If you’re too big for regulation, tough. Live with it. Learn to adapt. They might stretch to extra-long trousers but they won’t get you a new bunk, they’ll just tell you to buy some socks and stop being such a girl.

He uses 99p two-in-one shampoo and conditioner for his hair, then a bar of soap for his body, the same soap he scrubs his hands clean with at any other point. Sebastian thinks that showers, for all the awkward communal don’t-look-at-each-other’s-cocks aspect of them, were far better in the army. At least there if he dropped the soap there’d only be a thousand jokes instead of a very real risk of slipping and cracking his head. 

The shower sputters cold within moments of Sebastian managing to wash the last suds off his body. He drops the shower head to the floor of the bath without a thought, stepping back out of the bath and reaching for a towel.

He’s mostly dry - save for his hair - with the towel tucked around his hips when he steps back out of his bathroom, back into his living room, and he stops dead on the spot.

There’s a short, incredibly well dressed man sat on his couch, browsing the same old newspaper that Sebastian himself had been looking at the day before. He’s got a crop of short brown hair, spots of stubble on his jaw - a wholly unremarkable man, except for the way he holds himself. Like he’s a king - like he has every right to be here. Like he has a right to be anywhere he wants. Sebastian’s shoulders straighten, his spine stiffening, every muscle in his body instinctively preparing for a fight, and he demands, “Who the fuck are you?”

The stranger glances up and beams at him, but the expression doesn’t reach his eyes. Dark eyes. Eyes that are making Sebastian feel hot and nervous, eyes like nothing he’s ever seen before. “Hi,” he trills, voice bright and breezy, and he folds the newspaper neatly closed and then in half and sets it on the seat beside him as he stands up.

He brushes off the front of his suit - a proper suit, Sebastian realizes, smart and smooth and expensive - and approaches Sebastian, commenting, “You’re tall - but of course, I already knew that. Although somehow I didn’t imagine it would show so much.”  

Sebastian’s kind of thrown into silence for a minute whilst the man approaches him. He’s got a ridiculous voice, all camp and accented and musical, but there’s a strange threat beneath it. Sebastian swallows nervously. “Not a step closer until you tell me _who the fuck_ you are,” he musters up finally, and the man pauses in his steps.  

“Of course. Jim Moriarty.” He gestures his hand in a little flourish and affords Sebastian with a mocking bow, and then he straightens up and comments, “Dingy little hovel you’ve got, isn’t it?”

Never taking his eyes off the man, Sebastian reaches for his jeans, dropping the towel to step into them and yank them on whilst this man seems content to talk. There’s no point in fighting naked if you don’t have to. “Yeah, it’s a bit shit,” he remarks, buttoning his jeans. “What are you doing in my flat?”

Jim Moriarty glances around the flat, an eerie grin on his face, then drops it to an unnerving smile when he turns his gaze back to Sebastian. “Do excuse me,” he drawls, and says, “I have a... business suggestion for you, Mr Moran. I’m a specialist. And I need a specialist to be my much more hands on assistant.”

Sebastian surprises himself with the calmness in his voice when he replies. “I’m guessing this isn’t exactly legal?” 

“What gave you that idea?” Moriarty giggles. 

“Can’t be anything to do with the fact you broke into my fucking flat at six in the morning.” 

Moriarty giggles again. It’s a sound that gives Sebastian a feeling like someone’s just run a cheese grater down his spine. “You have a sense of humour,” he remarks. “Good, I like that.” He clears his throat and steps closer again and says, “I need someone merciless. Someone good at obeying orders. Someone with incredible accuracy and aim.”

His eyes trail across the floor, across the clothes that are on the floor, “Someone a little bit reckless.” Those eyes land back on Sebastian. Moriarty’s mouth goes a little twisted, into a tiny wicked smirk, and Sebastian gets a hot chill run all over him. It’s a sensation he can only compare to when he’s met a woman who he can tell, he can just _tell_ is an animal who is going to fuck him senseless and drain him dry.

It’s not a sensation he’s overly familiar with, admittedly, but it’s a sensation too unique to just forget. He knows it. And every time it comes upon him he’s never sure what to make of it. 

Moriarty continues, “It sounds to _me_ like I need a man who served in the army for 18 years, who was an SAS man who chased a tiger and was renowned for being able to pick men off at a great distance before his target even realized they had a gun on them.”

Sebastian nods before he even thinks about it, not in agreement but in understanding, “You want a marksman.”  

Moriarty claps, a single slap together of his hands before he responds, “Yes. This marksman would live with me, be my assistant, be my hands and guns. It would be comfortable.” He pauses and looks around the flat and corrects himself, “It would be luxurious, especially after living here.”

“I could just go to the police,” Sebastian says, testing the waters of just how illegal this is. 

Moriarty’s smile vanishes completely, eyes wide and positively murderous. Moriarty tells him calmly, “Well, if you were to refuse me in any way and attempt betraying me I would simply have to kill you with my bare hands and that would just be a tragic waste of my suit, if I got blood on it.”

His stare is so cold and devoid of anything human that Sebastian believes him.

And Sebastian is thrilled by it all.

“Tell me more about the life this marksman would have, Mr Moriarty.”

That smile returns to Moriarty’s lips again and he says, “Please, call me Jim.”

“Sebastian,” he gives in return, and shakes the man’s hand when he offers it.


	2. Jim's House

It takes less than a week for the few belongings that Sebastian cares about to be moved from his council flat into the swishy, expensive terraced house that Moriarty lives in. He gets the smaller room, but smaller doesn’t mean _small_ , not here. There’s more than enough room for a double bed, a desk and a wardrobe, with space to spare - though those things are already installed when he arrives with his boxes. 

They’re decent, too. Jim wasn’t kidding when he said it would be luxurious. The furniture is all new - Jim’s landlady, or their landlady now Sebastian supposes, said that the room was completely empty until Moriarty decided he wanted a live-in companion. The bed is long enough that Sebastian can completely stretch out on it, and the desk is more than ample.  

Sebastian doesn’t have any idea what he’s going to do with it at first, until Moriarty comes into his room and flings open Sebastian’s wardrobe and reveals the loose panel behind which is an array of empty weapons stands. “We’ll be filling those later,” Moriarty remarks, before closing the panel and leaving again, and at that point Sebastian decides that he’ll be using his desk as a place to clean his weapons.

The terrace house only has the one bathroom, but with a separated bath and shower, and everything is at the right height. That alone could’ve sold Sebastian on this place. He actually _fits_.

“Rules,” Moriarty starts, only a half-hour after Sebastian has unpacked the last of his belongings. “There are rules. If you go in my room, I will cut off the first joint of your pinky fingers. I will continue this every time you enter my room until you do not have a finger. I will then move on to the rest of the fingers - ”

“I get the picture,” Sebastian starts to say, and without warning, Moriarty backhands him. 

It blossoms stars behind his eyes and Sebastian holds his jaw, eyes wide. _He hit me,_ Sebastian thinks. _Do I hit him back?_

“Don’t interrupt and don’t talk back, dear,” Moriarty says calmly, checking the back of his hand. “There is a chain of command, Moran. You’re only escaping being a bottom feeder by virtue of the fact you live here. Everybody else in my empire - and it _is_ an empire - has crawled and killed and screamed their way to where they are.”

He lifts his hand and touches Sebastian’s jaw where he hit him, dragging a finger across the red skin. “You are lucky.”

“Very lucky,” Sebastian sneers, without thinking about it, and Moriarty hits him again.

_I should definitely hit back_ , Sebastian thinks, but then he reminds himself that Moriarty is not his friend. Moriarty is a psychopath, or a sociopath, whatever it is, and Sebastian hasn’t even known him a week yet. 

In total truth, Sebastian knows barely anything about what he’s signed himself up for. He only knows that it’s dangerous, illegal, and involves working for a man who strikes fear and excitement into him like nothing else, like no war zone ever did, and he was _compelled_ to go with him. Even if he survived turning Moriarty down, how could he ever go back to an ordinary life, knowing that the promise of so much wealth and excitement had been within his grasp?

If actually working for Jim Moriarty is even half as exciting as simply being around him, it’ll be worth it. Sebastian’s surprised by how little he’s bothered by the prospect of murdering people for pay. He’s looking forward to holding a weapon in hands again.

“You’ll learn,” Moriarty promises, holding Sebastian’s jaw again, and then he lets go and informs him, “You will dress better.” Sebastian’s confused at first, but then the landlady appears out of nowhere and Jim says, “She’ll measure you. You’re going to be my right hand man, Sebastian. You have to dress like a right-hand man. Not a,” he shudders visibly, “council estate slug.”

“I never dressed like a fucking slug,” Sebastian spits, unreasonably offended by the idea of it. What, does Moriarty seriously expect him to dress in suits, like some smarmy cunt? Like _him_?

“Of course not,” Moriarty says, in the most deliberately false voice that Sebastian has ever heard. Two strikes in already, Sebastian settles for growling aggressively at him instead of saying anything. 

After the landlady has taken the measurements - the length of his legs, the size of his waist, the length of his arms and many other things that he lost track of, in honesty - is when Moriarty speaks again.

“Most importantly, you will follow commands without question,” he comments, voice soft and quiet, so much so that Sebastian has to strain to listen. An irritating niggle in the back of his mind informs him that was rather the point. “If I want you to shoot someone, you will shoot them. If I want you to string someone up by their ankles and castrate them, you’ll do that too. If I want you to make someone into leather, you will skin them and treat their skin yourself.”

Moriarty rests his thumb on Sebastian’s chin then and says, “Are we clear?”

Sebastian pulls his shoulders back and nods firmly, and he answers, “Yes, sir.”

That tickles Moriarty. He laughs and teases, “Good boy,” in that silly, overdramatic, pitchy voice of his, before he gestures for Sebastian to follow him and says, “There is one thing I need to fix.”

“Oh?” Sebastian murmurs, as Moriarty steps into the bathroom and leaves the door open for him to follow. 

“Your hair,” Moriarty says simply, and he pulls a stool from the corner of the bathroom to rest in front of the mirror. Sebastian stares blankly at him as he plucks a pair of hairdressing scissors up into his hands and snips them menacingly. Jim talks as if he doesn’t see the apprehension. “Usually I’m _never_ so hands on - that’s why I hired you, after all! - but doesn’t the phrase go that if you want something doing right, do it yourself?”

Sebastian stares at him, unsure what to say. Jim raises his eyebrows and gestures at the stool. “Shirt off. Sit down. I don’t have all day.”

Sebastian sits down, because he doesn’t put it past Moriarty to stab him if he doesn’t. He hesitates for only a second before he pulls off his T-shirt, balling it into his lap, curling his hands around it like some kind of safety blanket. Moriarty approaches behind him, scissors held closed in his mouth, and he drags his fingers across Sebastian’s shoulders.

“Lots of scars,” Moriarty says, muffled around his mouthful of steel. Sebastian shivers involuntarily when Moriarty places his fingers flat along the sides of his neck and simply sort of strokes, feeling the texture of his skin and then touching a thin scar at the bottom of his throat. Sebastian swallows and Jim’s fingers press down a little.

He wants to tell Moriarty to stop. His heart is pounding. He’s uncomfortable as hell, in all honesty. If someone touched him like this at a hairdressers he’d tell them to stop, probably storm out and leave, but he just can’t. It might have something to do with the fact that his face still hurts from where his new boss slapped him twice, but - entirely seriously - he’s not sure.

Moriarty reaches down and touches the middle of Sebastian’s trophies from the tiger and sighs, “How did you kill it?”

“Shot the bloody thing in the heart,” he tells Jim, and watches his eyebrows quirk in the mirror. Finally, Moriarty takes the scissors in hand and begins to cut, and quickly Sebastian watches spikes of hair fall down onto his shoulders, pricking at his skin. 

“It must have been right on top of you,” Moriarty says, a complete statement rather than how Sebastian feels like it would sound from anyone else - they’d all say it like it was half a question, expecting some sort of confirmation. Not Moriarty. He doesn’t need to. Sebastian averts his eyes.

He can still remember the huffing noises the tiger made as it died. Warm. “There was blood everywhere,” Moriarty is saying, and there was, Sebastian remembers. His blood. The tiger’s. Thick and warm. Heavy on top of him. “Did you like it?”

“The tiger?” Sebastian is distracted back into reality and he stares at Moriarty’s reflection in the mirror as he focuses on cutting Sebastian’s hair, the constant snip-snip underlying their conversation. 

“Killing it.” _I loved it_ , Sebastian thinks, but he can’t bring himself to say that, but by Jim’s smile in the mirror he knows anyway. Somehow that’s worse. _Get out of my head_. 

“That would’ve been a sight,” Moriarty murmurs, and he closes whatever gap there was between them, his stomach pressed against Sebastian’s back as he reaches around with the scissors. _He has no concept of personal space_ , Sebastian thinks sullenly, then realizes, no: he’s doing it on purpose. It’s more awkward to cut his hair this way, and not just in that sense - his hands are put at strange angles by the proximity, and it’s no longer a natural thing but rather more forced and controlled to account for the rise in difficulty.

Sebastian doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. His fingers tighten in the ball of his T-shirt. Moriarty snips at the hair about Sebastian’s ears, the close of the scissors sending shivers down his spine, and then Moriarty leans low and blows hair clippings off his ear, and Sebastian has to suppress a harder shiver and screw his eyes shut.

“Am I bothering you?” Moriarty chuckles.

Sebastian doesn’t dignify that with an answer. He doesn’t want to think about what’s going on here, whatever it is Moriarty is up to. Sebastian just wants this damn haircut over with and then he wants to put as much distance between himself and his new boss as possible.

Well, as much space as this house will allow.

Thankfully, before long, Moriarty chimes, “Done!” in a chipper voice and Sebastian observes his handiwork in the mirror, standing up and getting close to inspect it with a faint air of amazement. It’s all short on the sides and back, with length left at the top, and Moriarty says, “You simply comb that back.” Sebastian nods. It looks good. He appreciates it.

He doesn’t really know what to say, though. Is he supposed to say thank you? He tries for just nodding at Jim, but doesn’t feel quite enough, and yet anything he could say seems stupid. He turns away from the mirror, and heads for the bathroom door, but before he can reach it, there’s a soft, “Oh, and Moran?”

He turns, dutifully, and raises his eyebrows at Moriarty. His boss smiles widely. “From now on, the only scars you’ll get will be from me.”

Sebastian’s blood runs on the cold side. “Right.” _What the fuck is that supposed to mean?_

__

For every second that he thinks there’s more upsides than downs, there’s ten more seconds where Sebastian feels like he’s put his foot in a bear trap that he’s waiting to go off.

He exits the bathroom as quickly as possible, brushing shorn hair from his shoulders once he’s back in the relative safety of his room. He should really shower, but well. Not right now. Sebastian pulls the T-shirt back on regardless of the uncomfortable prickling of hair down his back, coming to stand at his window, rolling up the blind.

He’s not used to a room with a view - a view of an actual something, as opposed to a hospital window staring out over sky or the poxy window in his council flat through which he could observe the grey concrete waste where he used to live. This terrace opens out onto one of the streets of London - people bustle by all the time, cars are parked down each side of the road and the other side is lined with equally lovely looking terraced homes. It’s not _much_ of a view, to be fair, but the buildings are smart and it’s a good area. It makes a change to everything else in his life for the past half a year.

He scratches his thigh with one hand, digging a hand into his pocket for a cigarette and lighter. On the first inhale of smoke, he relaxes, and he sits himself on the edge of the bed - his bed, in his new home.

Christ, his sister would hate this, and Sebastian laughs at the thought, chuckling out loud as he smokes the cigarette down to a stub, tapping the ash into the little plate that had come with him. Jim would probably get him an actual ashtray if he asked, but he’s not going to. There’s a line between letting your rich boss provide and feeling like he’s running your life before you’ve even done one job for him.

“Sebastian,” calls Moriarty from somewhere in the house, and Sebastian glances over his shoulder at his closed door.

“Bugger,” he mutters, putting out the cigarette. He sniffs and wipes his palms on his jeans and stands, but evidently he was taking too long - his bedroom door opens as he turns and Moriarty is stood there. “What?”

“I have business to see to,” Moriarty tells him. “Our landlady will be back with clothes. Cooperate.” That’s all that he gives Sebastian by way of information before he leaves, the front door slamming behind him; Sebastian crosses to his window and watches Moriarty stop on the pavement, putting on a pair of ridiculous oversized sunglasses before taking a right and walking away.

Sebastian only stops looking when Jim is entirely out of sight; at which point, he feels a bit weird for having been watching him in the first place.

_I need another cigarette._


	3. The First Assignment

“They’re in my way,” Moriarty had coos in his ear one morning, perhaps two weeks after Sebastian had moved in, presenting him with a small square photograph of an obese, balding man. Sebastian makes a noncommittal noise and takes it in hand. He’s halfway through a plate of toast, as it happens, with butter drizzling down his fingers, but Moriarty seems to pay no mind to that. Moriarty seems to find most everything to be inconsequential, only really caring if it affects him. 

“Who are they?” Sebastian asks, swallowing the last mouthful of toast and licking his fingers clean. He peers at the picture a little more intently and adds, “Size of them, of course they get in your bloody way.”

“Nobody you need to know. Government man. No one especially important, but they need removing.” Moriarty gestures flippantly and leans on the countertop. They’re in the kitchen - it’s a large place with an island counter, four stools despite the fact that Jim and Sebastian are the only people who live there. Sebastian isn’t about to complain, though. “I think I’m due a good old assassination. You’re going to shoot him.”

Sebastian puts the photo down on the counter, picking up his second slice and taking a bite from it. It’s somehow infinitely harder to get down. “Location?” He queries. Moriarty shoves him and makes a face.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Moran. Disgusting.” All the same, he tugs the photo towards him and turns it over, pulling a pen from somewhere in his suit and scribbling down a time and a place. “There are several vantage points. See that he dies.” Moriarty grabs Sebastian’s chin and forces him to look into those black pits he calls eyes and says, “You know what’ll happen to you if you ruin this, don’t you?”

Sebastian jerks his chin out of Moriarty’s grip. “Yeah, yeah. Skinning, fingerbones, all that sort of shit.” He bats Moriarty’s hand away. He’s getting used to Jim’s physical way of dealing with things. He’s also getting surer at fighting back. Boss or no boss, nobody pushes him around and gets away with it.

“Glad you understand,” Moriarty purrs, before he slaps Sebastian hard. Well, he can get away with _that._ A warning tap, by his standards, Sebastian feels. He’s used to it now. It’s barely worth reacting to. He does wonder if that’s why Moriarty does it; because Sebastian has no reaction.

Sebastian resists the urge to rub his jaw and reaches for his cup of coffee. It’s at his lips when he glances at Moriarty properly and realizes he’s dressed exactly the same as yesterday; he pauses and challenges, “Have you slept?” He remembers the conversation they had - “What is it today?” “McQueen, fall 2008. Old, but a favourite,” and then Moriarty had run his hand down the suit like it was an old lover.

Moriarty glances down at himself then shrugs and steals Sebastian’s drink right out of his hand, taking a  large mouthful that has to drain at least half the cup before he’s even taken a breath. He hands the coffee back and criticizes, “Foul. Too sweet.”

“There’s no sugar in it,” Sebastian points out, confused, peering down into his half-empty cup. No milk, either. There’s too much coordination involved in all that. First cup has to be strong and bitter. Moriarty shrugs again, snatching the last of Sebastian’s toast and walking out of the room, and Sebastian grunts and calls after him, “I forgot you like everything to taste of despair.”

Moriarty’s laugh echoes back at him.

“Arsehole,” Sebastian mutters, dragging the photo towards himself and reading the details on the back. It lists an exact address, right down to the floor number of the man’s office, and Sebastian nods to himself.

He can do this. It’s his job now. 

His first hit.

Sebastian shakes himself as he slides off the stool, as if literally shaking the nerves off him, and walks through the house and up the stairs to his room. It looks a lot more like a home now, with personal effects littered around and a small washing basket shoved in the corner. He throws his sleep shirt into that now, along with his boxers, and finds clean underclothes to wear.

Then he opens his wardrobe. A lot more full than the first day he arrived, he picks out the rightmost suit, a black superbly fitted number with a crisp white shirt and a thin tie. He even has black socks and well-fitted, sharp shoes to match; their landlady is clearly in with Jim’s lot, Sebastian realized when she’d come back after a few hours on that first day, carting four suits and accompanying pairs of shoes with her. 

As Sebastian faces the wardrobe door, where a mirror is pinned up, and tightens the tie about his throat, he wonders just how many people are _in with Jim’s lot_. It could be half of London. Half the country. No doubt he knows people overseas too.

_Am I the right hand to a crime lord?_ It’s not like there’s some Krays thing going on. It’s not _gangs_ or some sort of empire, there’s no fame - as it happens, he’s fairly certain that most people don’t even deal with Moriarty directly. _Right hand to a very quiet crime lord, then._

__

Sebastian shakes his head. Calling himself Moriarty’s right hand man feels ridiculous. He’s not even done much, yet. Moriarty simply vanishes at all hours of the night and day, always well groomed and well dressed. He never looks or acted tired, though Sebastian’s not sure he actually gets much sleep at all, which probably contributes to how batshit fucking insane he is. Sebastian just holds the fort here, which isn’t exactly hard.

He hasn’t done nothing, though. Sebastian smiles to himself as he presses on the loose panel behind his suits and reveals the gun racks. Bloody beautiful sight. They’re full now, not that Sebastian really understands why he needs so many guns, but Jim says it never hurts to be excessively prepared. (“Is that why there’s poison in the medicine cabinet?” “Exactly why.”)

He picks the precision rifle from the top rack; the unusual length of it sees that it requires disassembly before he can take it anywhere, and he collects the mount from the bottom of the hollow. It’s strange, Sebastian considers - this weapons rack is literally built right into the wall. Jim must be sure of himself. If there was ever a police raid and the wardrobe happened to be moved in any way...

Knowing Moriarty as he does - which is to say, barely at all - Sebastian suspects he has more than one back up plan in place.

Sebastian is out of the house in under an hour, keys, phone and wallet all in his various suit jacket pockets, tucked in beside a pair of fine black leather gloves and the photograph of his target. In hand, he carries a slightly thick but otherwise ordinary looking briefcase, sealed with a combination code and everything. He looks like any other Londoner on his way to work.

Which he is, really, and that kind of makes him chuckle.

He takes a cab, paying for it with Jim’s money, and stops it off a few streets from his actual destination. He wants to look casual whilst he searches for a good vantage point, which means walking so he has enough time to look around.

It’s like time passes in a haze as he finds a building with a good vantage point; he’s struck gold on a building that’s entirely empty, a giant TO LET sign plastered to the front of it. Before he even realizes it, he’s sat with the gun assembled peeking out a window, staring down the telescopic sight at his target, gloved hands resting along the length of the weapon, fingers twitching outside the trigger guard.

He’s just sat there, at his desk, doing nothing. Well, going through some papers or something. But nothing important or strenuous. He looks innocent. Sebastian wonders if he is. When he pulls this trigger, there’s no going back. He’ll be Moriarty’s forever, chained to him like a dog. 

Sebastian takes a deep breath and takes his eye from the sight, taking a moment to steady himself. For 18 years, Sebastian killed a great number of men in various fashions. If many of those can be excused for war, that still won’t make this the first murder he’s ever committed. Just the first person he’s ever been paid to murder.

He puts his eye back to the sight and readies himself, getting his focus back on target. The obese man is now stood facing the window, looking out over London. Sebastian smiles. _Perfect._

He aims and pulls the trigger once. The bullet cracks through the window. Red blossoms over the man’s face and he falls to the ground.

_Perfect_ , he thinks again, and lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

Sebastian didn’t realize just how much he’d missed killing. He feels electric. Invincible. _God_ , he wants to fuck something. Swallowing hard, he collects himself together as fast as he can and gets out of there as if nothing had ever happened. 

He barely remembers the trip home. It’s like his consciousness only returns to him once he’s out of the cab and back on the street of Jim’s terraced house, once he’s numbly climbing those steps and hoping he can just get into his room and bolt the door - except, _fuck_ , he can’t because there’s no lock on his fucking door.

Sebastian slams the front door behind him, taking the stairs two at a time and shutting the door to his bedroom firmly behind him. Then he just stands for a while, just... _stands_ there, briefcase still in hand, house keys warming against the heat of his palm. He’s got so much energy burning away inside of him and he doesn’t know what to do with it - when he was a soldier, there was barely time between one fight and the next and if you weren’t fighting you were dead or it was a slow day and that energy wasn’t there.

He wants to fight something or fuck something or - he _really_ wants to fuck something. Sebastian puts the briefcase down and realizes he hasn’t had sex with anyone for - maybe a month now, holy shit. That was a girlfriend, too. She was too normal. Normal girls want love and-or money, and Sebastian has neither to offer. It hadn’t lasted. Sex had been fantastic for as long as he’d been able to emotionally bluff his way through his time with her. 

He could go out and try his luck on a lonely girl who’s drinking too early, but it’s too much effort. Sebastian wants something _now_ , so he strips himself of his gloves and suit jacket and sits back on his bed and doesn’t waste his time in unbuttoning his trousers and getting them down with his boxers just enough that he can comfortably wrap a hand around his cock.

Sebastian isn’t looking to draw this out; he searches into the deepest pits of his mind for what he needs to get him off, the memory of a girl who liked to bite him and another who liked to ride him as if it were a very favourable day job, of the best breasts he’s ever touched and the firmest arse he’s ever grabbed.

The images change, though. When he’s completely hard and working a hand over himself to the memory of teeth and tongue torturing his skin, the memory of fingers pressing at his throat comes to mind, of hot breath blowing prickles of hair off his ear; Sebastian groans and digs his heels into the bed. _Get out of my head, get out._

He thinks about the girl who liked to ride him instead; hot and heavy and fierce, bouncing in his lap and grinning down on him, but it becomes fingers grabbing at his jaw and pulling him to eye contact, eyes that frighten and exhilarate him all at once.

Sebastian comes with a sharp moan, thinking about those fingers touching his scars and those eyes burning holes into him. Jim Moriarty’s eyes.

Sebastian wipes his fingers on the sheets and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes and yells, “Fuck!” in frustration, slamming his shoulders back against the headboard.

_What the fuck was that?_ He just wanked thinking about a guy. Of course, not just any guy, but his crazy psychopathic boss who had not three hours ago sent him to murder a man. His boss who is probably downstairs, right now.

He tucks himself back into his underwear and trousers and makes a face, heading down the hallway to wash his hands. Sebastian splashes water onto his face whilst he’s there; when he closes his eyes, Moriarty’s there, laughing at him, that obscene giggle scraping down his spine.

_The arse slaps me around for a few weeks and then doesn’t have the fucking decency to keep out of my fucking head when I’m -_ Sebastian splashes his face again, and then gropes for a towel, pressing it to his face with a frustrated groan. He straightens up in front of the mirror and stares himself down as he pats stray droplets of water off his neck and out of his hairline, and then he tosses the towel over the edge of the bath.

“Jim!” He bellows, turning on heel and striding out of the bathroom, jogging his way down the stairs. He comes across Moriarty as he appears to be browsing a selection of hypodermic needles in a box; that gives Sebastian pause for only a minute as he repeats, coldly, “Jim.”

“Hm?” Moriarty turns his head with a smile, the sort that would probably look pleasant on anyone else. Not on Jim, though.

“Stand up,” Sebastian says, flexing his hands. His boss does stand, but the smile is gone as he buttons his suit jacket and turns to observe Sebastian. He looks like he’s got a smart comment in mind, or some sort of biting quip about Sebastian giving him orders, maybe even a slap ready to dole out.

Sebastian doesn’t give him a chance. As soon as he’s within reach, he pulls his hand into a ball, brings his arm back and punches Moriarty in the face as hard as he can. 

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting in return, but he wasn’t expecting Moriarty to literally leap on him in retaliation, throwing them both down to the floor. A punch crunches into his nose, and an elbow gets him in the ribs; Sebastian does his best to hit back but bloody hell, for a small, weedy looking guy Moriarty is _strong_.

Sebastian manages to get a fist in at Moriarty’s stomach, but then teeth close against the skin of his arm through his shirt and bite down _hard_ \- he yells, and shoves Moriarty away from him, but then they immediately get back to the tussle. The shorter man gets a knee to Sebastian’s crotch eventually, and that does it; Sebastian’s lost and he yields, shoving Moriarty off him for good, grunting in pain as he crawls to prop himself up against a wall.

Moriarty stands up, and Sebastian stares up at him spitefully. Considering Sebastian got the first strike in, he looks better off for the fight, with only a blossoming bruise on his cheek. Sebastian himself is sore all over and he can feel a bruise on his arm and there’s blood trickling down his nose; he touches it gingerly and thankfully, it’s not broken.

Moriarty steps close and then drops himself across Sebastian’s lap, a knee either side of his thighs. Sebastian startles, unsure where to put his hands, so he puts them firmly on the carpet as Moriarty leans in close. He tries to crane his face away, but there’s not enough space for him to _go_ anywhere; Jim presses their noses together and says, “Do you feel better now?”

“Not really,” Sebastian mutters, and he lifts a hand to push Jim’s face away from his own. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“It was sort of fun, wasn’t it?” Moriarty chuckles, and he kisses the tip of Sebastian’s nose. “But I wouldn’t make a habit of hitting me. I can do far worse than give you a nosebleed.” Sebastian’s stomach turns a little as he realizes there’s a droplet of his blood on Jim’s lips, and then it flips entirely as he peeks his tongue out and licks it away.

“Unless of course you _enjoy_ being dominated,” Jim says, standing up and walking back to his needles, and Sebastian doesn’t really get the wording until Jim giggles.

He squeezes his eyes shut and bites down on his tongue, and scratches at his thigh, frowning and searching for something to do or say. Moriarty, however, takes the option away and voices, “You were shot in the leg. When?”

“Three years ago,” Sebastian answers without really thinking about it, and then he opens his eyes and looks at Moriarty sharply. Ignoring the abrupt change in subject, he snaps, “How the fuck did you know that?”

“You rub your leg, dear,” he says, not even looking over his shoulder, instead picking up each needle in the box one at a time and inspecting them. “Quite a lot, actually. Had to be a nasty injury that took a while to heal. You touch it under stress.” Sebastian can hear the smile when he says, “I stress you out quite a bit, hm? Does it manifest as actual pain?”

“It was dug out in the field,” Sebastian murmurs, “By a doctor who was discharged for improper conduct a month later. Shithead could’ve killed me. I had pain for longer than I should have, but it was an arse to get better. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Not psychosomatic from trauma, then.” The box of needles is snapped shut and slid aside, and Moriarty picks up another. Upon opening Sebastian can see a row of vials laid inside, with various liquids filling them. He tries not to think about it.

“I have no idea what that means.” Moriarty laughs. Sebastian scowls at him. “It just hurt a bloody lot when it was healing.” He hauls himself to his feet, intending to smoke down his entire packet of tobacco, and then he pauses and turns back to Moriarty and says, “I did what you asked.”

Moriarty hums acknowledgement. “I know.”

Sebastian doesn’t intend to ask how. He turns on heel and continues his planned exit, only to have Moriarty call up the stairs after him, “Clean up. We’re going out. Bring a lovely small gun, something that you can press into someone’s spine.”

Despite himself, Sebastian somehow smiles, and calls, “Yes, boss.”


	4. The Girlfriend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for potentially disturbing material, character death.

After seven months, Sebastian doesn’t recognize himself anymore, and he’s entirely fine with that. He’s killed more people than he can count, expanded his collection of weaponry to the basement of his and Jim’s house, and doubled up said basement as a torture chamber on more than one occasion. He’s intimidated, followed, collected bribes from and slit the throats of anybody that Jim’s asked him to, without question.

When he isn’t doing that, he’s by Moriarty’s side, where ever the criminal takes him. It’s quite the fascinating life that Moriarty leads. Sebastian knows better than to try and get involved in anything without Jim’s express desire - it’s all above and beyond him, the complexities of running a criminal network in London. He’s a gun for hire, Jim’s man, the occasional director of Jim’s _other_ guns for hire, not much more. He knows he makes a reasonable threat in any meeting, too, the 6’4” stoic ex-SAS man stood watch over proceedings.

That is, if he’s not busy watching the meeting through a gun sight from a reasonable distance. That’s his favourite thing, when people can’t even see him coming, when they don’t even know the danger they’re in. Most of them don’t even know the danger until they’ve got a bullet or two in them.

Working for Moriarty feels like what Sebastian’s _needed_ , all these years. He didn’t chase a tiger down a drain because he thought it was the right thing to do or because it killed one of the men in his regiment. He did it because it was exciting. It got his blood pumping. It was a chance for a chase, a death approved by his superiors but not regulated by any laws. Being with Moriarty is like being with that beast again, and working for him is more stimulating and intoxicating than chasing a _hundred_ tigers.

At home, things are as tense as they ever were. Able to keep up the obedient facade in public or whilst on a job, Sebastian just can’t hold his tongue in the house. He’s lost track of the physical fights he’s been in with Jim, of the furniture they’ve broken whilst attacking each other.

Sebastian isn’t even doing it because he _hates_ Moriarty or something, because he doesn’t. He enjoys the fights, enjoys licking blood from his mouth where Moriarty’s smacked his head into a wall and he’s cut a tooth all the way through his lip, enjoys the aftermath where Moriarty takes great pleasure in injecting Sebastian with enough morphine for him to get dizzy or where he doesn’t give him anything at all and just stitches his wounds closed, deliberately messy and unclean.

_From now on, the only scars you’ll get will be from me_ , Jim had said, and he’s held Sebastian to that sure enough.

Sebastian somehow always comes worse off in those fights. It’s a fucked up cycle. He hits Jim and Jim tears him to shreds, sews him back together and Sebastian comes back for more, soon as he can. 

Alone, Moriarty is still in Sebastian’s head. It makes him furious with himself. He can’t get off without touching the bruises Jim’s given him or thinking about each slap, punch, hit, the weight of the man in his lap, that singular memory of the haircut still so fresh in his mind after all this time. And then he’s so mad he just wants to hit Moriarty again.

Again: vicious cycle.

The only time he finds himself able to relax when he isn’t working is when he smokes.

Still, the occasional reprieve from it all comes along, a break from Moriarty entirely. Tonight it’s simply a note: _I have a date._ _Don’t wait up._ Sebastian’s stomach twists peculiarly at that, but he puts it down to disbelief. When does Jim even have the time to find a date? And who the hell would _want_ to date him? All the same, it’s a night off, and Sebastian isn’t going to kick a gift horse in the arse, or whatever the saying is.

He dresses in his now only pair of jeans - he’d persuaded Jim to allow him to keep them, for things such as following people around it’s just a little less conspicuous to be dressed in jeans instead of a shirt - and one of his white button-downs, leaving only the top button undone and the tail of his shirt untucked. 

Sebastian’s going to go for a drink. He may or may not be on the pull; he’s had a couple of unimportant one night stands, but for the most part it’s been work, work, punch Moriarty, wanking, and more work. It would be good to get some tonight, whilst he’s got a break. Moriarty’s going to - so why shouldn’t he, right?

The bar he goes to is a nice, quiet place, somewhere he hasn’t been in a couple of years - he remembers coming here with some of his fellow SAS boys when they had a weekend in London to themselves. It was a great night. Well, that’s bullshit, it was boring, but he drank and smoked a lot, and that was okay.

There are several prospective women on hand when he enters. He narrows them down; one is too ugly, one is clearly waiting for someone, one is too high maintenance, the other’s a bit on the skinny side. Sebastian’s target is a pear-shaped woman leant on the bar, hips canted. She’s got a tumble of curly black hair, a sweet pale face and dark eyes.

She looks like a woman who’s not waiting for anything at all. Just an opportunity. An opportunity is all that Sebastian’s after, so. He gives her a good once over; she’s in a black dress, long legs out on show, ending in little heels. Sebastian puts on his best charming expression (thankfully, Jim hasn’t punched him in the face in a week or so; he’s got a little yellow bruise on the corner of his jaw but nothing noticeable) and he strolls over and simply asks, “Can I get you a drink?”

She appraises him carefully and then stands up straight, angling her shoulders towards Sebastian and saying, “What makes you think I let strange men buy me drinks?”

Sebastian chuckles and leans on the bar. “I’m a very nice man, I assure you,” he tells her - she laughs at that - and he extends a hand out. She gently puts her fingers in his, and he brings them to his lips and kisses her knuckles. “Sebastian Moran. There. I’m not a stranger anymore. What are you drinking?”

“Vodka and coke,” she tells him, and says, “Mercedes. My name’s Mercedes.”

“Mercedes,” Sebastian repeats, rolling the name around in his mouth. “Lovely to meet you.” And then he orders the first drinks of the night.

It goes smoothly; around the third or fourth round of drinks she touches his face, running a smooth thumb over his cheek, and then she giggles, cheeks pink. A normal giggle, a normal smile, no darkness or pure evil behind it. They even talk, like two normal people.

“An ex-army man, hm?” She tilts her head, curls falling into her eyes, and Sebastian reaches out to push them back as he answers her.

“18 years in the SAS.” He leans close and says, with a lie he’d prepared earlier, “Now I’m a stunt man.” As careers go, it’s the only one he can think of to explain the bruises he’s got below the collar from fighting Moriarty. “It pays well.”

“Oh?” Mercedes chuckles. Her fingers brush against his wrist where it’s resting on the bar. “How much, exactly?”

Sebastian laughs, “Surely you’re not talking to me just for my _money_.”

“I’d never do such a thing,” she declares, with a sparkle in her eye, and Sebastian thinks, _She’s a little wicked after all_. “Mere curiousity, nothing more.” She smirks at him.

“A gentleman never reveals his secrets.”

Mercedes gets close then, fingers sliding against the fabric of his shirt, and she says, “Oh, but I don’t think you’re a gentleman at all,” but it doesn’t sound like a criticism. “I think you’re as bad as I am - or I _hope_ so, anyway…” Her thumb rubs a little circular pattern against his chest and she stands on tip-toe to kiss his cheek, kiss up to his ear and stage-whisper that, “I live about five minutes away. I have a lovely bed. Would you like to see it?”

_Struck gold_. How is he to refuse? He goes with her, and they walk in the cold together, her arm about his waist and his over her shoulder, her heels clipping on the pavement. They kiss outside her front step, Sebastian’s fingers too low on her back, holding her against him. She leads him by the hand into her dark apartment, straight through to her bedroom, where she pushes him down onto the bed and turns the light on just before unzipping her dress and letting it fall around her feet.

Mercedes doesn’t mess about. Sebastian likes that. She only takes the time to kick her shoes off before she’s in his lap, warm and squirmy and - so _warm_ , and real, her body soft and keen under his hands and against his chest. 

She unbuttons his shirt and then she stops, dead still, and goes, “What the hell?”

Sebastian doesn’t understand at first, and with a quick glance down he realizes she’s staring at his scars, his missing nipple. “Oh, that,” he says thickly. If she decides she doesn’t want to fuck him because he’s down a nipple he’s going to be so pissed.

“Sorry, just,” Mercedes stammers, her eyes wide and surprised. It takes a moment but when she relaxes and touches the stripes gently, dragging her finger across the middle one, and she questions, “How did this happen? At war?”

“Sort of,” Sebastian says, not really keen on talking about his scars right _now_ of all times. “Would you believe me if I told you a tiger gave them to me?”

“Seriously?” She eyes him for a good minute, and then finally says, “Somehow I believe it.” She inspects the scars, pushing his shirt from his shoulders, and says, “They’re kind of sexy.” She bites her lip, her cheeks flushed, and she gives him a hard kiss, rocking her hips on his lap.

Mercedes touches all his scars, old and new, within her reach when they fuck; it doesn’t interest him, not in the way Jim’s touch does, and Jesus Christ, that’s _so_ fucked up that he can’t get his infuriating psychotic boss out of his head even when he’s balls-deep in a girl who’s equal parts charming and hot.

She goes to sleep against his chest when they’re done, a leg slung across his hip. This wasn’t in the plan. He was going to just sneak out, but she’s all wound around him - how the hell is he supposed to get away now?

Sebastian supposes he doesn’t have that much of a choice. He goes to sleep, and hopes that they just swiftly part ways the next morning.

That wish couldn’t be more opposite of what actually happens: he wakes up to the smell of coffee that Mercedes brings to him in bed, and there’s not a drop of sugar or milk in his _or_ hers. “I imagine you’ll want to be out,” she says dryly, and Sebastian thinks, _Good, no illusions here,_ but then she follows it up with, “But I, personally, wouldn’t complain if I got to see you again.” She punctuates each word with a kiss as she says, “You’re very, very attractive.”

He’s saying, “I can’t come up with _any_ objections to such a compelling argument.” before he even realizes it. 

So when Sebastian does go on his way, it’s with a mobile number listed as _< 3 Mercedes_ in his phone. She put it like that, but he hasn’t any thoughts about changing it. 

“How was your date?” Sebastian questions Moriarty when he gets in, and his boss just chuckles and says something cryptic about everything falling into place. 

“It wasn’t _actually_ a date,” Moriarty says, “But it will be.” He eyes Sebastian. “And how was the bimbo you slept with?”

“Hot,” Sebastian answers, and he leaves it at that as he arranges going for coffee with Mercedes via text.

There’s three more coffee dates after that before they move to dinner dates; two weeks pass before Sebastian has sex with her again, and he realizes very suddenly the morning after that that Mercedes is his girlfriend. When he finds himself going shoe shopping with her, he realizes she’s _definitely_ his girlfriend.

He wonders what Jim would think about that. _Probably nothing good,_ Sebastian reckons, and so he neglects to mention where it is he keeps going, who it is he keeps visiting, and Moriarty doesn’t ask anyway.

Having a steady girlfriend is nice. It’s hard to fake all the emotions required for it - sure, he likes her well enough, but normality is boring beyond belief. It reminds him of the dead stupor he found himself in before Moriarty saved him. But it… it’s nice. It can’t last forever, obviously. Sebastian’s never loved a girlfriend and he’s not going to turn into some big romantic now. It’s hard to drum up sympathy for the hell Mercedes has at her shop job, or enthusiasm for the shitty Italian food she loves to cook.

At the same time, the normality is a relief. It doesn’t always work, but Mercedes is a good lay, more than capable of helping him keep thoughts of Jim at bay. That alone makes the suffering worth it - to come in her or on her and not _hate_ himself because he’s got the touch of a man on his mind.

Mercedes is also one of the few girlfriends he’s ever had who genuinely likes doling out blow jobs.

It’s a Monday morning when Jim drags him halfway across London to assassinate some politician or another - it’s an irritatingly long trip, and when they get there, they find a vantage point and Moriarty says, “Oh, we’ve missed them. What a shame. Never mind then. Home?”

It was probably then that Sebastian should’ve been tipped off that something was seriously amiss. Instead, he just has a go at Moriarty about being a cunt (which got him a very, very sharp elbow to the gut, but not much more) and then they return home - and _then_ Sebastian realizes that something is wrong. 

There’s a man only a couple of inches off Sebastian’s height, but burly, dangerous looking, leaving the house, and he nods at Moriarty as he goes by - and almost immediately, Moriarty’s demeanour changes. Cold and serious, eyes black like murder, Moriarty says to Sebastian, “Come with me to the basement.”

Sebastian follows, silent and wary, his forehead creased as they trudge down into that darkness. Moriarty flicks the light switch, and steps aside and sneers, “You first, darling.”

Sebastian frowns at him and does as he’s told, and then sucks in a sharp breath at the sight before him. He balls his hands into fists and shakes his head, staring at the ground.

“Look at her,” Moriarty says, walking around to the back of the chair in the center of the basement. Sebastian shakes his head. “Look at her!” Moriarty screams, his whole body convulsing with the force of his voice. 

Sebastian looks.

Mercedes is crying. With good reason, being as she’s tied to a chair, gagged, a bloody gash on the corner of her forehead trickling down her face. She makes muffled, panicked noises at him, struggling against the bonds, and Sebastian doesn’t feel anything except annoyance.

“What are you fucking _doing_?” He hisses at Moriarty. _Should’ve known he’d find out, should’ve guessed he’d never let me keep something like this._

__

“Did you think I didn’t know?” Moriarty says, resting his fingers on Mercedes’ shoulders. He grips her so tight the skin under his fingers turns white. “Think you can just sneak around and have a _normal_ life, sleeping with your boring girlfriend and doing _normal_ things then come back here and kill people for me?” His voice rises to a bellow again, his eyes terrifying, “It doesn’t work like that!”

He leans down to Mercedes’ ear and whispers, “Now, if I take this off,” he fingers the tape around her head, the gag, “You’re not going to scream, are you? Because I’ll cut your tongue out if you do.” She shakes her head and fat, ugly tears roll down her cheeks. Moriarty walks to a table and selects scissors that he snips the tape away with, pulling it off her face sharply - it has to hurt, and she whimpers as Moriarty yanks a cloth out of her mouth.

She lifts her head and looks at Sebastian and whimpers, “Sebastian, what’s going on? What’s _happening_?”

Sebastian doesn’t have an answer for that. He doesn’t know himself. He searches for the emotions he’s supposed to have right now - fear? Fear for her? But he doesn’t know what they’re supposed to be and he can’t find them. He’s just angry at Jim. He didn’t have to do this.

He says, aware that he can’t even muster the right tone of voice for such a lie and he says, “It’ll be okay. You’re going to be fine.”

Moriarty calls him on his shit straight away, of course. “Oh, good,” he crows, fingers squeezing in at Mercedes’ shoulders again. “Lie to her. That’s good.” Moriarty leans down to her ear and turns her chin to face him and says, eyebrows raised, “Do _you_ think it’s going to be okay?”

She shakes her head.

“That’s because it’s not,” he tells her coldly, dropping her chin and straightening up to face Sebastian. “Tell her what you do for a living, Sebastian. Tell her who I am, who you work for.”

Sebastian scowls at him. This is an exercise in humiliation, a deliberate punishment. _There were other ways to do this._ He sucks in a deep breath and he tells Mercedes, “I kill people. For him. His name is Jim Moriarty and he is the most dangerous man in all of England. And I shoot people, stab people. Kill them. Frighten them.”

His eyes flicker to Moriarty, who smiles broadly and nods. He looks back down to Mercedes, crying, staring at him, her mouth open in disbelief. “Anything he wants, I do it,” Sebastian finishes softly.

“And he likes it,” Moriarty chimes in gleefully, leaning down to Mercedes again. “I mean, he _really_ likes it. The amount of times he comes home after a kill and he shuts himself up away in his room - he thinks nobody knows what he’s doing up there. But I know.” Mercedes sobs loudly and tries to lean away from Moriarty, but he grabs her face hard, pulling her back towards him, and he says, “He goes up there and he jerks off. It’s the rush of it, see. He gets hot and bothered over the power he gets from taking someone’s life just because I told him to. Not because they’re bad. Not because they’re evil. Because I told him to.”

Sebastian can feel his face flushing. He should do something. He should tell Moriarty to stop or tell him to leave her alone. Defend her honour, defend himself. But he can’t. He just stands there. It isn’t as if Moriarty is telling any lies.

“Of course, just because that’s what gets him hot,” Moriarty drawls, leaning casually on Mercedes shoulders as if she’s an old friend that he’s simply telling a curious story to, as if she isn’t bound and tied down and sobbing. “That doesn’t mean that’s what he actually jerks off thinking about.” He giggles. “That would be _weird_.” He smacks his lips together and says, as if it’s nothing at all, “No, he thinks about me.”

Sebastian jerks his head up and he takes a step back, and he says, “How did -” and then he clamps his mouth shut, biting his tongue. Mercedes stares at him, her red eyes speaking of betrayal. Of course she feels betrayed.

“He doesn’t even deny it. Brilliant, isn’t it?” Moriarty giggles. His face turns entirely serious and he rubs his cheek against Mercedes’ and says, almost sadly, “I wonder if he thinks about me when he’s with you.”

He hasn’t. Not lately. But Sebastian’s face goes redder anyway.

“How _could you_?” Mercedes sobs, and Sebastian tears his gaze away. His blood is boiling. There were better, less awful ways for Jim to humiliate him, but then he supposes Jim wouldn’t get anything out of it if it wasn’t the most awful thing he could possibly do.

“There’s a lot more he’s lied to you about,” Jim assures her, to rub salt and dirt into the wound. “Like he really doesn’t care about your hardships. Or you, at all, really. He thinks you’re alright, of course, else he wouldn’t put up with you, but you don’t, ah, _do it_ for him. You’re so ordinary, so plain. And he’s mine. He’s tied to me. I could lead him in nothing more than innocent circles and he would never be able to belong to a boring thing like you, not ever.”

Moriarty straightens up and talks directly to Sebastian, then, snapping his fingers to get his attention - as if he didn’t already have it. “This is the thing, Sebastian. You can’t lie to me. I have eyes everywhere. You can’t hide from me, and if you want to work for me, you can’t hide from yourself.”

His voice is calm, dangerously so, as he talks whilst moving away from Mercedes to browse an array of items on the table. “You can’t pretend to be normal. We’re not like them, like these people who feel and fear and have morals in abundance and hesitate on every little thing in their lives, Sebastian.”

Moriarty selects a knife, and he stands behind Mercedes again, twirling it around in his fingers. “We’re different. We like death and mayhem. We like sex and blood and to attack and to have power. We’re not _weak_ and you can’t pretend to be like them.” His voice rises again, turning angry, turning hard, and he yells, “You will never be like them!” and with those final words, he pulls Mercedes’ head back by her hair and cuts her throat deep.

Blood splashes Sebastian’s shoes, splatters on the floor in front of him, pours down Mercedes’ throat, down her body and clothes, soaking her as she gurgles and shakes in her moments of death. Moriarty drops her hair from his hand and throws the knife aside. It clatters loudly across the floor, and Moriarty strides to Sebastian’s side, stepping over blood as he goes.

“You can’t feel like them,” he states. “Do you even feel sorry that she’s dead?”

_No, I don’t,_ Sebastian thinks, as her blood pours down, but he won’t say that. He doesn’t feel anything other than irritated, angry at Moriarty for humiliating him like this.

Moriarty takes Sebastian’s chin in his hand and forces him to look down at him. His fingers are covered in Mercedes’ blood, slippery against his skin. “This is a lesson,” he says, and he pulls Sebastian down into a kiss, soft and bitter and wet. Sebastian can’t pull away. He can’t bring himself to.

Jim pushes him away as suddenly as he pulled, and gestures at Mercedes’ bloody corpse and instructs, “Clean her up.” before he leaves.


	5. A Book For Children

The week after Mercedes’ death in the basement of the terraced house, Sebastian finds himself without much to do. Jim is up to something. He has a day job, one that involves him dressing in jeans too tight and low and even tighter and lower-cut V-neck shirts. Sebastian thought about questioning it, but he hasn’t really spoken to Moriarty since they kissed. They’ve not even fought. He hasn’t a single bruise or fresh cut on him.

He’d love to say he isn’t sulking, but he is. He’s embarrassed. He was careless. Sebastian should’ve anticipated that hiding a girlfriend from his boss was a bad idea. He should’ve also seen that he couldn’t lead a double life. It wasn’t going to work out well, no matter what. Moriarty saw all that without a word, and chose the most efficient way possible to teach Sebastian a lesson, to humiliate him.

Sebastian finds himself doing nothing but cleaning his guns and going over what happened in the basement. The revelation of his fantasies; how could Moriarty possibly know that? Is he that transparent? 

Somehow murdering Sebastian’s girlfriend in cold blood hasn’t dampened them, either, but out of some sort of respect for the girl who died so he could learn a thing or two about himself and the life he leads now, he hasn’t done anything about them. He’s pushed them aside. Tried to find it in himself to mourn. Failed miserably, of course.

He’s angry at himself.

Angry enough that when Augusta calls and demands they catch up over a late lunch, Sebastian hates himself enough to accept the invitation. He hasn’t anything really clean but his suits, so he puts on one of those minus the tie - but he takes care to roll up his sleeves. Maybe this can work in his favour, anyway, and he can convince Augusta that he’s not the layabout failure she seems to think he is.

“It’s been a while, hm?” She says, when they’re seated in a booth, pouring over the minimal cafe menus. “You look smart. Or well, you would if you had a tie and jacket on. Did you have a job interview today or something?”

Sebastian’s mouth twitches and he stares very hard at the list of meals. _Chicken salad. Croutons with salad. Tomato and mozzarella salad. Salad with salad. Why the fuck is there so much salad?_ He lifts his chin to look at Augusta and says, “I’ve had a bloody job for eight months, Augusta.”

Eyes wide, she stares at him in surprise. “Really? Doing what?”

Irritated, he snaps, “Don’t sound so fucking surprised.” Sebastian rolls his shoulders, shaking off the bad attitude as best he can and says, “I’m a bodyguard. Easy work, good money.” He lowers his eyes to the menu again. _Wow, do I want the salad or the salad?_ “Makes sure that 18 years in the army doesn’t go down the pisser,” he tacks on the end.

Augusta makes a derisive noise and, again exemplifying her similarities to their father, straightens her back, slapping her menu down, and says harshly, “Don’t you snap at me, Sebastian Moran. You don’t answer your phone and only return my calls for five seconds to let me know that you’re not dead. How am I supposed to know if you’ve a job at all?”

Sebastian rolls his eyes, but he knows she’s right. He’s not going to apologize, though. He says, “What’ve you been doing the past few months?” as a gesture of peace of sorts. 

He learns that Augusta has been promoted from secondary head-of-some-sort-of-office to the actual head of said office-thing, and that her three children are all doing excellently in school, and that her eldest son looks to be keen on joining the RAF when he’s old enough. Her husband got made redundant, but they’re scraping through just fine. 

She’s halfway through an explanation of her daughter’s first ever school play when Sebastian, not of his own volition, says, “Don’t you ever get bored?”

Augusta blinks at him, wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”

“It’s the same crap day in, day out. Don’t you get tired of it?” He rubs a hand over his face. He’s come to a point where he no longer comprehends the way that most people live, the way people like his sister live. All that human interaction.

“I love my family, Sebastian,” she says, in an expression of warmth that genuinely surprises him. “I don’t tire of it. One day, you’ll understand how it feels.”

Eyeing her, he mutters sourly, “Will I?” and leans back as their waiter finally turns up. His sister orders a fried chicken salad, and Sebastian, he sighs heavily at the menu and simply says, “Any salad. Go on. Surprise me.”

By the time the painful, lettuce-y late lunch is over it’s pushing five in the afternoon - the walk back and subsequent ride on the tube station that gets him closest to the house, and then the final stretch there, takes him another hour, and a check of his watch as the sky starts to dim confirms that Jim should be back from his weird temporary day job by now. Maybe he’ll talk to him. More likely he’ll hole away in his room until he’s hungry again.

He slots his key in the front door, lets himself in and is well on his way to jogging up the stairs when he is stopped short by the most peculiar sight on the sofa: a guest. Not a hostage, because she’s giggling and has a glass of wine in her hand. Not one of Moriarty’s lot, because she just looks too innocent. Brown-haired and mousy, with a sweet face. Stepping closer to the living room, frowning, Jim comes into view, in one of his stupid V-neck shirts, a glass of wine in his own hand.

Sebastian stares silently for a bit, and his jaw drops when Jim says coyly, “Come here,” and the two lean into each other and share a pretty little kiss. _What the bollocking fucks?_

__

Moriarty turns his head then and says, “Seb!” and beckons him over.

_You didn’t. You bloody didn’t just call me Seb._ Swallowing his pride, he forces a smile as the girl glances over at him, eyes wide, and he steps close. Jim and the girl stand, and Moriarty introduces them, “Molly, this is my room mate Sebastian - Seb, this is…” He shrugs shyly, and looks at the girl for a suggestion. “My girlfriend?” She nods, blushing, and Jim confirms, “This is my girlfriend, Molly Hooper.”

“Right.” Sebastian shakes his head and extends a hand out to Molly and says, “Nice to meet you.” She makes a little noise and shakes his hand, smiling. _I hope you like your boyfriends with broken noses, Molly Hooper._ Jim raises his eyebrows at Sebastian and Sebastian clears his throat and says, “I uh - I have a thing. To do. Upstairs.”

He turns and walks away, calling, “You kids have fun.” over his shoulder. 

Tittering laughter, entirely unlike Jim’s natural laugh, follows him, and Sebastian rubs a hand over his face, entirely confused. He waits out the next couple of hours through cigarettes in his room; he’d clean guns but he can’t risk if Moriarty wants to bring his new bimbo upstairs to say goodbye or something.

It’s gone eight when Molly finally leaves; he hears her tiny, tinkly “Bye!” and Moriarty’s answering call and then the door shuts and Moriarty shouts up, “You can come out of hiding now.”

“I wasn’t bloody hiding,” Sebastian says as he emerges, standing at the top of the stairs and glowering down at his boss. “ _Seb_?”

“I had fun with that,” Moriarty remarks, putting his hands in his jeans pockets and grinning. “I know how much you hate that name.”

Sebastian makes a face at him and descends a few steps before he stops and says, “Your girlfriend?” He doesn’t mean it to sound as venomous as it does. “You have a fucking girlfriend?” That rephrasing doesn’t make it any better.

Moriarty raises an eyebrow. “Why, are you jealous?”

“No.” _Yes._ He reaches the bottom of the steps and stands face to face with Moriarty, who doesn’t move, just leers up at him. Sebastian tugs at the collar of his shirt and says, “Are you going to move?”

“I’m using her, Sebastian,” Jim says with a hearty giggle. “A means to an end. There’s a man I need to meet. Sherlock Holmes…” He says the name so wistfully that Sebastian’s stomach lurches, twists, and he moves past Moriarty quickly. “Oh, now you _are_ jealous.”

Sebastian shakes his head, palming the back of his neck and heading for the kitchen. “Why would I be jealous?”

Moriarty follows him, saying, “Did you selectively forget the bit where I know you fantasize about me?”

_No, I haven’t. I really haven’t._ Sebastian swallows again, uncomfortable, keeping his back to Moriarty as he comes to the sink and turns the tap on, grabbing a glass and filling it with cold water. “How… how did you - ”

“You’re like an open book printed in very large font. A book for children,” Moriarty says frankly, stealing the glass from Sebastian’s hand and drinking from it. Sebastian scowls. “The way you look at me…” Jim’s eyebrows quirk and he finishes, “It’s like you want to fuck me senseless.”

The words send a hot shiver down Sebastian’s spine and his fingers fall to grasp at the edge of the sink. Jim doesn’t swear much, if at all. He has better ways of putting across his meaning, delivering what he wants; he doesn’t need to curse. Usually.

Sebastian rubs his leg and searches for something to defend himself with; finally his eyes land on Jim’s stupid V-neck and he says, “You look like a cunt.”

Moriarty bristles and headbutts Sebastian without warning, sending him reeling.

Good. A fight. Sebastian can do fights. He can handle physical violence. He doesn’t have to think about it and he doesn’t have to think about anything that’s said. He just has to figure out where to put his fists next.

Moriarty lands a blow to his stomach before Sebastian can even recover from the crack of skull on skull; Sebastian falls back into the counter, groaning, and then he punches out at Moriarty, striking him in the chest and managing to get one in under his ribs. As always though, the tussle fails to turn in his favour; Moriarty gets a good hold on Sebastian’s hair, and throws him to the floor.

He groans, sprawled out across the kitchen floor on his back, and without warning Moriarty is suddenly on top of him, a mirror image of the first fight he lost - knees either side of his hips. This time though, Moriarty just leans all the way over him, hands planted either side of Sebastian’s head.

Sebastian stares up at him groggily, and then he puts his hands to Jim’s side and throws them over. They’re squashed between counter tops, between the island and the counter along the sink, and there isn’t much in the way of breathing room; the roll just leaves them pressed up against one counter, hands and limbs everywhere.

“My my,” Jim breathes, eyes big and teeth all on show in the most wicked of grins. “What do we do now?” Sebastian swallows, staring down at him. “Gonna beat me up, dear?” He coos. “Gonna try to hit me so hard that it makes up for how much you want to kiss me?” Jim twists his leg and presses it up between Sebastian’s thighs, shifting it and rubbing lightly, and Sebastian realizes he’s even more out of his depth than he was five minutes ago.

“Or are you going to chicken out entirely?” Jim giggles and says, “Molly Hooper wouldn’t say no.”

“If you fuck her I’ll kill her,” Sebastian breathes, and then he realizes what he’s said. Jim’s eyes darken and his smile becomes close-mouthed, and somehow more devious, like he’s pleased that he’s finally getting to Sebastian’s ruined core.

“How would you do that?” Jim asks, and he presses his thigh up harder and bites his lip, touching Sebastian’s face, touching the scar at his throat, rubbing the stripes on his chest through his shirt. “Would you let me watch? Teach me a lesson?”

Sebastian’s whole body shakes.

“No,” Jim says, answering himself with a quiet hum. “No, because you wouldn’t be punishing me for touching her. You’d be punishing her for touching me.” He laughs, triumphant, and he takes the decision and hesitation out of Sebastian’s hands; he pulls his face down and kisses him, bruising and careless and every bit as violent as every physical fight they’ve ever had.

Sebastian kisses him back, pushing into it, letting loose every bit of _want_ he’s had building up for months, every ache and desire he’s restrained himself from in the past week alone. He jerks his hips against Moriarty’s leg, and struggles for the position he wants, trying to keep friction and get what he wants all at once. 

Jim works with him until it’s just how Sebastian’s always imagined this, how he’s always pictured it in every sordid fantasy: Moriarty, flat on his back beneath him, legs pushed apart.

Sebastian wants to take advantage of it. He wants to take his time, slowly bring Moriarty apart, be the one in control for the first time. But that’s the thing about time, there’s not enough of it, especially not now, and he has no patience to boot. He just wants, wants, _wants_ , and this will be enough to ease his blood and maybe, just maybe, he’ll be lucky enough to earn a next time.

He buries his head in the crook of Jim’s neck and just breathes him in, rutting uselessly against him, a hand grabbing at a thigh and another at his waist; Jim’s own hands fist in his hand and the sleeve of his shirt. Jim arches his back and makes this tiny, pleased noise, and Sebastian sits up, tugging his shirt out of the waist of his trousers and undoing them, pulling down his zipper with trembling hands.

Jim stretches out like a cat underneath him, knees propped up either side. He looks fucking stupid, in a V-neck that’s all rucked up from their tussling and jeans that are too tight for _anything_ , but he could be wearing a fucking polka-dot dress and Sebastian would still want every inch of him, in every way.

He hesitates, though, a hand on the edge of his boxers; Jim murmurs, “Go on.”

Sebastian pushes them down and takes his cock in hand, hissing as he finally touches himself, and rather than do anything that Sebastian expected (since when has Jim ever done what he expected?), Jim just lies there, bottom lip caught in his teeth, _watching_ like a hungry animal.

Sebastian starts stroking himself fast, a careless rhythm designed to bring him to the edge and nothing else, so leisurely wait about it. He needs to come, and soon, get rid of the work up he’s had inside him forever, and he groans when Jim’s hand slithers down his own chest to squeeze his own crotch, palming himself through those dumb fucking jeans whilst Sebastian jerks off over him.

He kisses Jim without permission, steadying himself with one elbow and then pushes his face against Jim’s neck again, moaning. Moriarty’s free hand tangles back into his hair, and he hisses encouragement, making little pleasured noises of his own, groans and gasps that drive Sebastian closer and closer to his release.

It’s when Moriarty murmurs, “Good boy” that he’s done for; he moans desperately and comes, in his own hand and on Jim’s clothes. He curses and swears, shudders rolling across his body, and Jim chuckles darkly.

“Fuck,” Sebastian groans against Jim’s throat, pressing his mouth against Jim’s pulse just to feel it run fast, just to know the effect here really is sort of mutual.

He knows Jim’s not there yet, wants to touch him and bring him over the edge but he doesn’t know how. He lifts his head and struggles to a seated position, attempting to convey this without saying, “I don’t know how to touch another man’s dick”.

Jim doesn’t seem at all fussed, though. He just gives Sebastian one of his wicked, promising looks, with a kiss to match, and wriggles out from beneath him and gets to his feet, cackling as he exits the kitchen. “Goodnight, Sebastian,” he calls, in a singsong voice, and then he adds, “I’m going to Molly’s tomorrow night.” 

Sebastian punches the floor, but does so very halfheartedly before he stands up and cleans himself off at the sink, and when he does go to bed he can still taste Jim on his lips, and that’s enough for a time.


	6. Established Violence

Sebastian doesn’t know what he thought was going to happen. He went to sleep only a little less in turmoil than he’d been ever since he first met Moriarty, and the next day Moriarty acts as if nothing happened, pads around the kitchen barefoot (with the rest of his suit on, no less) as if they hadn’t senselessly rutted right there on the floor some handful of hours ago.

If anything, Sebastian’s now far more confused, and now he’s trying to work out what even happened last night. They fought and then - Sebastian got off, but Jim didn’t. He sips his coffee slowly, suspiciously even, watching his boss pace about the kitchen on the phone, drifting between sickly sweet tones and a thunder that Sebastian would be terrified of if he were on the receiving end.

Moriarty can charm and frighten anyone in the same sentence. _Myself included._ When Jim hangs up, he beckons his fingers at Sebastian and demands, “You. You need another haircut. You’ll go to the place down the road.” He’s still pacing, prowling the length of the kitchen, fingers twitching. Sebastian purses his lips. Moriarty’s _thinking_. Usually it’s not so obvious.

“Oh, no offers to cut my hair so you can grope me shirtless?” He responds, swallowing down the rest of his coffee before Jim can get any ideas. He sets the empty cup on the counter, opening his mouth to pour out another smart-arse remark, something that might just provoke Moriarty a little bit, but before he can even form the first syllable of the first word, Jim vanishes from the kitchen, the stairs creaking in one or two places as he goes up them.

Sebastian frowns and listens to the ceiling, to the click of a bedroom door, and then he realizes Jim hasn’t gone to his own room - he’s gone to Sebastian’s. “What - ?” He scrambles off the stool and makes his way upstairs, missing the last step to get himself up that little bit quicker.

He pushes his bedroom door open to reveal Moriarty stood facing out of Sebastian’s window, one hand up and holding open slats in the blinds, peeking through onto midmorning London. In his other hand, he’s holding one of Sebastian’s knives - one of the few he really calls his own, a hunting knife that he’s fond of with gold inlay in the handle. “I need to take my mind off work,” Jim announces, fingers slipping from the blinds.

Sebastian raises his eyebrows and folds his arms. A cool calm descends over him. He’s getting the idea, he really is. “Is that right?”

Jim hums and nods and turns, approaching Sebastian. “Since all I got last night was dirty clothes you have an obvious obligation to help me,” he claims, and he spins the hunting knife in his hands before he presses the sharp edge of it to Sebastian’s cheek.

Sebastian doesn’t move, or flinch. Moriarty keeps a firm pressure on the knife’s edge, enough that it aches but not quite enough to break through skin. They stare each other down like that, until Jim slices a line down Sebastian’s cheek and chuckles. “You’d literally do anything I want, wouldn’t you?” His eyes are wide and sparkling, full of glee, his smile made to match. “You’d let me tear you apart.”

“You say that like you haven’t already,” Sebastian tells him, and the cut in his cheek weeps red down his face, a trickle of blood that his boss swipes onto his thumb.

“Oh, you are mine,” Jim remarks, and he kisses Sebastian’s mouth, surprisingly gentle but all Moriarty. If kisses were made of sweets, all of his would be laced with cyanide. “I like that you’re mine,” he whispers, in a voice that sounds a lot more like it’s saying _You were mine since the moment I chose you, since before we even met._

__

Kisses turn bitter and biting soon enough, and the hunting knife clatters to the floor. Jim’s fingers bruise at the nape of Sebastian’s neck, fist in his clothes, his teeth scrape across Sebastian’s throat; Sebastian pulls at Jim’s suit, getting the tie off first and tossing it aside. It’s a tug of war just to get each other’s clothes off, and Sebastian would be shocked if it were anything less.

When Jim’s down to underwear, he slips out of Sebastian’s grasp and laughs obnoxiously, vanishing out of the room entirely. Sebastian blanches, grasping at thin air where Moriarty had been only a second before; he’s half a mind to follow, but then Jim reappears, a tube in one hand and a foil sachet in the other.

“You plan for these things?”

Jim waggles his eyebrows and says, “Of course not, do you think me some kind of _floozy_ , Mr Moran?” He pushes Sebastian back towards the bed without a further word, shoving him onto it and clambering into his lap and purring, “Now, there are two things I told you when you first stooped your way into my life. The first being that if you want a job doing well, do it yourself. The second being that it never hurts to be excessively prepared.”

With a wide grin, he says, “You’re going to find both of these things to be very true.”

Sebastian’s eyebrows go up, but he doesn’t have the chance to _really_ process what’s been said; in fact, he can’t think much further than the fact he’s fairly certain they’re about to have sex, actual sex, _real sex_. It’s like the assertion of belonging has wiped away fear, doubt, anything he could have possibly felt about this moment, about the warmth of Jim in his lap and skin against skin and how that makes him feel, about the mechanics and logistics.

“You’ve never done this before, have you?” Jim asks, despite the fact he already knows the answer. Sebastian’s sure he just wants to see him squirm. Jim enjoys tormenting people. Sebastian’s seen him make the country’s most important men break down by prodding the insecurities he can read off them. He doesn’t give Jim the satisfaction of an answer, but he didn’t need one anyway, he’s just amusing himself.

Moriarty wiggles his hips down against Sebastian’s, but then that pleasant weight of him is gone again as he rolls away to kick off his underwear - Sebastian quickly does the same, pulling off his T-shirt as he does, and when the fabric is out of his eyes and he can see again, Jim’s sat up, humming “I Will Survive” and squeezing lubricant onto his fingers. 

Sebastian’s too busy staring at the naked length of his body to realize what exactly Moriarty is doing. He’s evenly pale, spotted with purple bruises gifted to him by Sebastian, an attractive trail of dark hair dusting down from his bellybutton. He’s all blurred edges, not soft but not so lean, and slim, thin legs that aren’t as long as they look when he’s in his prim, tailored suits. He’s _incredibly_ attractive, white and black all over.

And then Sebastian actually notices that Jim’s fingering himself; at first he’s taken aback by how awkward it looks, but then he sees the way Jim’s got his jaw all slack and his head tipped back and he’s just working himself open with two fingers. Sebastian’s stomach does a little excited, nervous flip, and he realizes just how attractive he finds this, as sights go.

“Enjoying the show?” Moriarty questions, his voice tight and face smug, and Sebastian jerks his chin up, meeting Jim’s eyes with his own. He nods, throat dry, and he leans over Jim with the full intent to kiss that expression away. He’s second-guessed, like always, and Jim has him pushed against the headboard only a moment later, sprawled over his lap again. 

“I think I get your point about the whole, do it yourself thing,” Sebastian says, and Jim kisses the tip of his nose.

“I knew you’d get the picture,” Moriarty sighs happily, and then he brings the condom to his mouth and tears the foil open between his teeth with a vicious grin, plucking the rubber out between two fingers. Sebastian can’t help but chuckle offhandedly - Moriarty waggles his eyebrows at him and then shifts back, taking Sebastian’s cock in hand and rolling the condom on with a pleased noise that drowns out Sebastian’s long sigh. 

“Finally,” Jim mutters, kneeling up, and then he pauses to comment, “Isn’t sex so _boring_ when you have to take your time?” He runs his finger along the dried blood on Sebastian’s cheek and then recovers the lube and smears a squeeze of it down the length of his cock, “But I don’t know what disgusting diseases you got from sleeping with that sewer rat for weeks, and I have a lot of theories about how I’m going to die but none of them involve catching syphilis.”

Sebastian scowls, “You really have a way of keeping a man interested." 

“That I do,” Jim responds pleasantly, and then he lines Sebastian’s cock to his entrance and sinks down. Sebastian makes a choked off noise in the back of his throat and his hands fly to Jim’s hips; his favourite sociopath leans in close and kisses him and says, “You were saying?”

Sebastian can’t actually remember what he was saying. He squeezes his fingers against Jim’s hips, white skin turning whiter under the pressure of his hands. Moriarty gets himself comfortable with his fingers pressed just as hard into the skin of his neck, with the other hand pressed against the stripes on his chest, and then he begins to move, shifting his hips back and forth, beginning a rise and fall that triggers Sebastian to cry out.

Moriarty’s loud once he gets going, a steady stream of “Oh!” and nonsensical strings of words, Sebastian’s name thrown into the mix from time to him. He bites when he’s out of breath, sinking his teeth against Sebastian’s collarbone, the flesh of his neck.

After a time Sebastian grows in confidence - it takes as much time to remember that this isn’t all that much different from regular sex as it does to realize he’s not going to _break_ Moriarty. And even if he did he would deserve a medal, frankly. It would be a hard won title, the man who broke Jim Moriarty. 

He makes an effort to straighten his back, to sit up properly instead of resting back against the headboard, and grasps his hands on Jim’s thighs and waist and jerks his hips up, thrusting against Jim’s rhythm - the criminal makes a sharp noise at that, he’d call it surprise had it been anyone else, and then Jim wraps his arms around Sebastian and drags nails down his back.

Sebastian moans suddenly in response, and that’s how things turn, with Sebastian thrusting and groaning, Jim still making his own, ridiculous noises but with those _nails_ , not especially long but sharp and thin, bite against his back. He can feel his skin break at least once, and sometimes he answers for pain instead of pleasure, but the two sensations are so close beside each other that he can barely tell the difference. Besides, with Jim, hasn’t he always gotten one out of the other? Sex is as much a fight as their _actual_ fights.

Less punching, but, as one of Jim’s hands fists in Sebastian’s hair when he lets go with a particularly hard thrust, just as much hair-pulling. And about the same amount of spilled blood and exhaustion. 

It should be weird but it’s exciting, instead. It makes it better, to have something so violent it makes him dizzy. There’s something about Jim that makes Sebastian crave everything dark that he’s never wanted to confront, and an extra something that makes him okay with all that.

His orgasm effectively sneaks up on him; that deep heat that curls and twists in the pit of his stomach appearing out of nowhere, and then with the warmth of Jim around him, tangled and against him, it takes a slide of nails and a tug at his scalp to see him coming with a low moan, and Jim rides it out before he takes Sebastian’s hand and guides it to his cock, and with a few quick strokes of his palm, he comes too.

Jim groans and takes kisses from Sebastian like he owns them - which he does. Every last one is his to steal or push away or bite. Sebastian’s entire _life_ belongs to him, and Moriarty acknowledges it with a dark laugh and another press of lips.

“Shouldn’t you have gone to your day job today?” Sebastian wonders, afterwards, and Jim says vacantly, “Oh yeah, that.” Sebastian wants to bite his tongue, but he can’t help but ask, “And aren’t you going to Molly’s tonight?” and Jim echoes himself with, “Oh yeah, her.”

Jim doesn’t go to work or Molly’s. He feigns sickness over the phone to both instead, with alarming authenticity.

The next time they fuck - under twenty-four hours later, before Jim leaves to actually go to work - the established violence grows; Jim greets Sebastian in the kitchen with the muzzle of a revolver pressed to the nape of his neck, and then fucks him there, bending him over the first available surface. The games only grow from there, escalating over the next couple of days, but so does Jim’s skittishness and neuroses, and Sebastian - even as he’s giving a pretty enthusiastic if sloppy blowjob whilst Jim reads _The Sun_ on the sofa - can’t help but wonder if something is afoot.

And then Moriarty tells him he wants to play a new game, with the man named Sherlock Holmes.


	7. An Interruption

“Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me to get rid of my lover’s nasty sister? Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me to disappear to South America?”

“Just so.”

Sebastian only gets snatches of the conversation. Doesn’t want to listen, really. Doesn’t like where this could go or what could happen. His job doesn’t involve their conversations. He keeps a rifle on John Watson, Sherlock’s well-meaning, bumbling little sidekick, a short army doctor with post-traumatic stress disorder. Older than himself. Only a captain. Sent back for the same reasons as Sebastian, wounds too grave to continue, but in a far worse state, and he was probably better liked by his superiors.

Sebastian is Watson’s superior in this room, though, and he doesn’t like him at all. He blinks once to shake the thoughts away. His job doesn’t involve being contemptuous about his mark, either. No, Sebastian’s job is to keep one eye and one bullet on John Watson, and an eye on the eight or so other sharpshooters lining the darkened upper reaches of the swimming pool. 

He narrows his eyes when Watson leaps at Moriarty, and quietly gestures to the shooter closest to to himself. A slim, hard-faced woman, she nods and circles around to the opposite side of the pool within moments, and silently too, lowering herself to her knees and bringing the sight to her eyes, flicking the laser on.

And then only minutes later, Jim decides to leave. Sebastian places no weight in that idea. He might stock a lot of faith in Moriarty but he knows that Jim’s slippery, a liar, in two minds at all times.

Indeed, as Jim slips out of the door, Sebastian’s phone silently buzzes in his pocket. He glances down on the men - on Sherlock tearing the bomb vest away from Watson - and leans away from his rifle, pulling his phone out and clicking it on.

_All eyes on my new friend and his pet, darling. xx_

__

Sebastian shuts off the screen and slides the phone back into his pocket and lifts his hands, gesturing for the marksmen to all line up their sights on Watson and Holmes. Then he brings his own rifle back into the mix, rolling his shoulders and lining his sight against John’s chest.

Jim makes his reappearance, all flourishes and grand gestures, and Sebastian listens to the sound of his voice and stares down at where Watson’s heart should be. Part of him is itching. He rests his finger on the trigger guard, tapping uselessly. He wants to send Holmes and his dog sky-high. He wants to _end_ the obsession that’s taking over his Jim one case at a time. 

And then Moriarty’s phone rings. Sebastian jerks his eye from the scope irresponsibly, eyeing his boss. Sherlock lowers that gun. Jim walks away and snaps his fingers. It’s like letting out a long held breath, getting to give the order for the shooters to back down.

_I’ve never been so fucking happy to hear the cunting Bee Gees,_ Sebastian thinks, and he and his men vanish into the darkness before Sherlock can say another word.

He meets Moriarty two streets away, and under the darkness of London in a back alley with only the streetlamp at the end to light the way. Jim pulls him into a breathless, excited kiss and says, “Oh, isn’t he _fun_? Fun, but so…” He leans back and waves his hand at the wrist, rolling his eyes bitterly and saying, “ _Domestic_. All those feelings, all that caring about people I kill and people I threaten to kill.”

“He could’ve killed you,” Sebastian snaps. 

Moriarty seems entirely nonplussed by this thought. In fact, he seems a little pleased. Regardless, he says, “And you, my dear, would’ve killed him in instant retaliation. Justice served.” He flicks Sebastian’s cheek.

_More like I would’ve torn him limb from limb and left his guts for the rats,_ Sebastian considers as Moriarty whistles pleasantly and strolls off down the alleyway, fingers tapping his thigh in a signal to follow. Sebastian sighs and walks off after him, shifting a duffel bag containing the pieces of his rifle from hand to hand.

“Who called?” He asks, catching up with Moriarty’s pace.

“The Woman,” Jim tells him mysteriously, lips quirked up in a smile. Sebastian raises an eyebrow. “Irene Adler. I know her by reputation and association, enough that she has my number. She’s a dominatrix. She loves to cause trouble.” Sebastian stares at Jim hard, narrowly avoiding stepping into a lamppost when he drawls, “Sex and violence. She reminds me of _me_ , but not nearly as smart or pretty.”

“Wait,” Sebastian says, realizing he’s just following Jim without question - which isn’t any different from usual, but it’s gone midnight and they’re in the middle of London. “Are we going to see her now?”

Moriarty looks over his shoulder with raised eyebrows as if it’s entirely obvious. “Of course. But not immediately. She’s servicing a princess right now. Literally a Princess, capital P,” he draws the letter in question with a finger in the air as if it needed making so clear, “It’s all going to get _very_ exciting, I think, and you know I hate waiting for fun to get going.”

“Is this Irene a bloody lesbian?” Sebastian demands to know.

Jim gives him an appalled look. “That’s what you took from that? Really?” Sebastian shrugs. Jim rolls his eyes and tuts, and then takes a left and calls, “Keep up, Colonel.” 

Sebastian does as he’s told.

They take a cab after Jim points out that The Woman lives a good five miles from where they are and Sebastian asserts that he doesn’t care how much Jim needs to burn off energy, he’s _not_ walking five miles with a rifle in a bag through the middle of London. It takes the promise of “I’ll suck your dick before we leave” to get Jim to agree, but Sebastian still gets in the cab with a nosebleed when Moriarty head-butts him for an insubordinate attitude.

“I’m surprised that you’re in the mood for face to face again so soon,” Sebastian reflects as they reach Irene Adler’s front door. “Not your style.” If he sounds a little bitter, it’s because in the past days alone he’s travelled for hours at a time to sit training his rifle on some insignificant hostage that Jim has chosen to be his voice. Only once has he pulled the trigger, and it was on a blasted old woman. There’s no joy in killing the weak, the wounded. There’s no sport in it. Even less joy in trying to maneuver his way around England with weapons without alerting the authorities.

“I _have_ to see this,” Jim responds keenly, and then his voice turns to pure, business-like ice, “I have to make sure she’s not lying and make sure that she knows I cannot be played.” At the door, Jim presses the buzzer and it’s opened without question. An attractive woman - but not the woman they’re after, Sebastian thinks - stands there, and she directs them into the living room.

_Ah_ , Sebastian thinks, with an intrigued raise of his eyebrows, _now that’s definitely who we’re after._

__

It rightly doesn’t make sense that Irene Adler would make a successful living as a dominatrix if she wasn’t attractive, and well, she’s one of the more attractive women that Sebastian’s ever had the fortune to look at. “Good evening, Mr Moriarty,” she says, bare legs crossed at the knee, legs that end in long sharp heels. She’s wearing her hair in a delicate up-do, and dressed in a lace gown that doesn’t leave an awful lot to the imagination.

“Is her Highness still here?” Moriarty questions, making himself comfortable on her sofa, an arm sprawled out across the length of the back. Sebastian for his part stands there, intending to keep to his usual role of Intimidating Tall Man, until Moriarty says, “Sit, Sebastian.” and he does as instructed, resting the duffel bag at his feet.

“She’s a little tired right now,” Irene says, then smiles, ruby red lips widening. “But I have her all night.” Sebastian can’t help but smile at that. God knows which member of the Royal family Irene has locked away in her room, but the mere _idea_ of it… She does like to cause trouble. “Who’s your friend?”

Sebastian realises she’s talking about him and lifts his chin and intercepts before Moriarty can say a word, “Sebastian Moran, Miss Adler.” He feels her eyes glance about his person; they linger on his sleeve, where the cuff of his shirt is poking out, stained dark red around the edges where he used it to clean up his nosebleed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Please,” she says, eyes sparkling as she leans forward, uncrossing her knees and leaning on them with her elbows. She turns a phone around in her hands. “Call me Irene. And likewise. I didn’t realise that Mr Moriarty would be bringing a friend. I would have dressed properly.”

“Oh no,” Sebastian assures her, lips twitching into a smile, “What you’re wearing now is just fine." 

“In that case,” Irene laughs a little, reclining into her chair again, and then she shifts her attention back to Moriarty, who has been tapping his fingers impatiently on his knee. “Here,” she says, typing something into the phone and then handing it over.

Jim browses the phone one handed, a look of mild disinterest on his face. As he browses, his hand steals across the sofa and his fingers wrap themselves around Sebastian’s wrist, squeezing brutally hard. Sebastian keeps his face straight, not making a sound or remark, but he stares at Moriarty. _What the fuck?_

__

“All this and I’ve not the faintest what to do with it,” Irene says, and Moriarty makes a slight, amused noise and shifts his grip on Sebastian’s wrist. A less painful hold, yet more obvious. Irene’s eyes land on it and her eyebrows quirk up. Sebastian frowns.

Irene’s mouth opens the slightest and her tongue dances over the top row of her teeth, and she murmurs with a sly smile, “Not just friends, then.”

Sebastian’s frown deepens and he opens his mouth to protest - though he’s not sure why, it’s true, isn’t it? That he and Moriarty aren’t just friends? If they ever were to begin with - when Jim decides to speak up, handing the phone back and saying, “Do you have pictures of the Princess?”

“Not yet,” Irene says, brow creasing just the slightest.

“Take a great many,” Jim insists, and says, “I’ll be in touch, Miss Adler. There’s a dance you’ll need to send a man on to get this. I trust you know how to make men dance.”

“I know what they like,” Irene answers, and Jim smiles sardonically. 

“Of course you do.” He stands up, finally releasing Sebastian’s wrist and brushing down his suit. “Goodbye.”

“Is that it?” She remarks, eyebrows up.

“That’s it,” Jim says sharply. “Like I said. I’ll be in touch.” He makes an exit, not waiting for Sebastian to stand. Sebastian frowns as he gets up, picking up the duffel bag, and he turns to Irene to say goodbye.

“Is your boyfriend always like that?” She questions.

Sebastian scowls. “He’s not my boyfriend. We’re not a couple. And yes.” He rolls his shoulders and makes for the door, pausing as he reaches it and turning back and saying, “Thank you.”

Irene raises her eyebrows. “For what?”

_For stopping him from letting Sherlock blow him up. For giving him something new to play with._ “Nothing. Have a good evening, Miss Adler.”

His shoes clap on the floor as he sees himself out, jogging down the steps to see Moriarty stood halfway down the road, talking on his phone, his shoulders hunched against the wind as he gestures threateningly. From a distance, Sebastian smiles, and then realises he’s wistfully watching a sociopath probably threaten to do something like castrate a man with a rusty spoon. Or rather threaten to have Sebastian do that.

He shakes his head and approaches, duffel bag swinging from one hand whilst the other tucks into his pocket. “Bad client?” He mouths.

“Awful,” Moriarty answers just as silently, and Sebastian snorts. They set off down the street at a pace together, and Moriarty says, “No, no, you see, if you don’t get the money from him, it won’t be him I’ll be having tortured and dismembered and awfully treated so that you stay alive as long as possible, it’ll be you. I think my man’ll start with your greasy fingers. Fingernails pulled first. Then he’ll skin each finger, tiny strips at a time.”

Sebastian chuckles to himself. Jim is nothing short of inventive. It’s probably one of Sebastian’s things about him. There’s no end to the deep, dark reaches of his mind, and if Sebastian weren’t so taken by it he’s sure he’d have the appropriate reaction of finding it shocking, or whatever it is.

“Tomorrow? No, no, sweetie. You have six hours.”

“No pressure,” Sebastian murmurs, eyeing the road beneath their feet, smiling. He glances sidelong to see Jim hang up the phone and tuck it back into his jacket with an irritable sigh. “One of your faces playing up?”

“Why don’t these people understand that I can’t be played, hmm?” He whines, linking his arm through Sebastian’s and leaning his head against his upper arm. “I just can’t. I _like_ killing people, Sebastian. If there wasn’t so much legwork involved I’d do it more often. But if I have to see someone dreadfully tortured who am I to object? And yet people still think they can slip by me. They act like I won’t do it. And my own _face_! I hate it when the faces don’t do their jobs.”

Moriarty really does make face-to-face interaction a surprisingly rare thing. He saves that for special people. Mostly he works through faces - those acting on his behalf. Sebastian is a face of sorts, but so closely associated with the man himself that if you see Sebastian then the real thing isn’t far behind. Jim gets most worked up when his faces play silly buggers.

“I’ll be sure to make it as painful as I can,” Sebastian simpers, kissing the top of Moriarty’s head, nose pressing into his messy dark hair. 

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Jim sighs, squeezing his arm. After a beat, they break apart, laughing wickedly, and Jim adds, “He’s going to wet himself when you find him.” as he’s brushing off the front of his suit. 

“You think this one’ll run?”

“I _know_ he’ll run.” 

They reach the end of the road and Sebastian peers around for a cab. A mostly residential area, there aren’t that many cabs just passing through - they need to get a few streets over, and then they’ll be able to catch one, and so off they go again, walking together, meandering down the center of the road just because they can.

Sebastian eyes Jim from time to time, Jim who seems to enjoy the wind now he’s walking, Jim who keeps humming songs and seems so lost in his own mind. Sebastian interrupts it eventually though. He has to. “Why did you do that? At Irene Adler’s house? Why were you grabbing me?”

Jim doesn’t give him a clear answer. Instead, he says, laughing, “She won’t have sex with you, you know. Not unless you pay her. And I know she’s a dominatrix but I’m not sure even she would go for pegging.”

Sebastian swallows and stops. Jim keeps walking. He scrubs a hand over his jaw and scowls at Moriarty, then… it’s like it clicks. _Is your boyfriend always like that?_ echoes the voice of The Woman in his head, and Sebastian says, “Did you get jealous?” It takes him only two or three longer strides to catch up the distance put between them, and then Jim suddenly stops, his back bumping into Sebastian’s chest.

He turns sharply and gets real close, uncomfortably close, sneering up at Sebastian with his eyes wide and lips curled. “What do I have to get jealous of? The employee that I sleep with for sport was flirting with the whore who is probably going to get herself killed within a few months. I have nothing to be jealous of."

Sebastian stands his ground, jaw set. This is how quickly things change between them. He says, “I’m not just your fucking employee, Jim.” 

Jim cackles, loud and cruel, his breath hot on Sebastian’s face. “Did you think there was something here?” He gestures between them. “Did you think that this was something special? Were you under the impression that we would ride off into the sunset together, hand in hand, off to get married and happily continue our lives in a cottage in Ireland?”

He wipes a hand over his mouth, still laughing, that grating, dark sound echoing about the empty street. “Although I’m sure you’d happily bury corpses under the patio with me, it’s never going to happen.” He punches Sebastian hard in the chest, then lays his hand flat over his heart. “Don’t let this useless piece of muscle start feeling things. You’ll only ruin it all.”

To set the message in, Moriarty slaps Sebastian about the face and then walks away laughing.

This time he doesn’t follow.


	8. Grapefruit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obnoxiously short chapter. I apologise.

“Where’ve you _been_?” Jim protests, all coquettish and smiling, when Sebastian gets home the next morning, damned duffel bag with his rifle in still clutched in his hands.

“I went gambling,” Sebastian says, throwing the bag down. It makes an ugly noise. He blinks at it. He probably shouldn’t have done that. He’s been awake over 24 hours at this point, though, and everything’s a little blurry around the edges. “And drinking.” More than a little blurry, actually.

“You’re not still sulking over what I said, are you?” He exclaims, leaning against the wall in their hallway. “Goodness me, Moran. Such a baby.”

“No,” Sebastian says, earnestly, and Jim waves his hand and makes a face. “Rancid,” he comments, and Sebastian ignores him and says, leaning down to make their faces level, “But you do make me want to shoot myself in the face, yeah? Never asked for your bloody opinion. You’re the one who freaked out when I asked why you were touching me up like I’m some prized fucking toy that no-one’s allowed near.”

Moriarty narrows his eyes and then shoves Sebastian hard into the opposite wall, putting a hand to his throat and squeezing just enough to make him gasp for air. “You _belong_ to me. My first generation collector’s edition Sebastian Moran. You’re a toy if I want you to be. But not a toy for every pathetic prostitute in London. You remember what I did to the last one.”

“See now,” Sebastian breathes, making sure he does it as powerfully as possible, knows his breath _reeks_ , “Sounds an awful fucking lot like fucking jealousy.”

“Dear me,” Jim says, rolling his eyes. “Would you like me to be jealous?” He bats his eyelashes. “If it’ll shut you up, I can play jealous.” He presses his body all along against Sebastian’s, presses up against him and clutches his clothes and kisses him sweetly, kisses at his jaw and whispers, “I don’t want you to look at anyone else like that, Sebastian.”

He closes his eyes and drops his head back; it thunks against the wall and hurts, but it doesn’t notice. Jim’s fingers run along the sides of his neck, rub at his skin through his shirt, pull on his tie. “I need you, baby,” Moriarty coos, “When you look at those girls, when you looked at Irene Adler, I was _so_ upset. I just want you to be all mine. I can’t live without you. I’ll do _anything_ for you to be all mine, to never look at anyone else the way you look at me.” His mouth burns hot against Sebastian’s pulse. “Anything you want.”

It’s just play, pretend, complete bullshit, but against his better judgement - against his mind, Sebastian’s more than a little turned on. _God, yes. I want all of that._ He wants Jim to give anything to him, for him. He wants the great Moriarty to crave Sebastian’s attention and beg for him. “Anything?” he finds himself repeating.

Jim’s fingers play at the zipper of Sebastian’s trousers; he pops the top button and then drags the zipper all the way down and he whispers, “Anything.” He shifts fabrics about and then wraps a hand around the length of Sebastian’s cock, working his hand up and down.

Sebastian moans, blinking up at the ceiling. It’s like everything shifts in and out of focus. He hovers his hand above Jim’s wrist, then touches him above the elbow; and then, on impulse, he pulls him into a deep kiss. He groans out his name when Jim thumbs at the head of his cock, and Moriarty says with a longing sigh, “Say you’ll be mine, won’t you?”

“I’m yours,” Sebastian murmurs, chasing Jim’s mouth with his own, but Moriarty giggles obnoxiously and steps away entirely. Sobriety of a kind hits Sebastian like a brick as every ounce of the illusion is broken, and Jim folds his arms, casting an eye up and down the length of Sebastian’s body.

“I already knew as much,” Moriarty remarks. “Although who knows why I’d keep you. Put your dick away and take a shower. We have work to do.” He pats Sebastian on the arm and waltz away down the hall to the kitchen, whistling loudly.

Sebastian growls and tucks himself away unhappily. He tries to take the stairs two at a time but trips halfway up, the tip of his shoe catching on the lip of the a step under his foot. His knees crash against the stairs and Sebastian, unable to bottle it up, yells in frustration, swearing violently and standing only to viciously kick the offending step, after which he stomps up the rest - carefully, one at a time.

Moriarty is infuriating. He was jealous, Sebastian is sure of it, and if it weren’t for the fact that _he’s_ come to terms with the fact he gets jealous over Jim he’d probably let this go. He doesn’t want to be alone in this stupid, awful facade of a relationship. Fuck someone else? It would never happen. Flirting brings up possessive tactics and ends in huge fights, apparently. 

Sebastian barely remembers to get his clothes off before he pulls himself into a scalding shower. He leans his forearms against the tile and his forehead against his wrists and sighs unhappily, pulling his focus onto the burn of the water pouring down against his skin. He pushes his hair out of his eyes. 

There’s a lot that’s one-sided and unfair about the way they live, and Sebastian’s coped with it for months. He’s fine with it, really. But before they started having sex with each other at least Sebastian knew where he stood: with no power at all. It should still feel like that. Chain of command and all. Maybe he’s confused because he’s completely and hideously drunk and down five hundred quid (he is definitely not going to mention that to Jim).

Sebastian groans and feels around for the shampoo. It gets in his eyes when it foams through his hair, and the water washing it out doesn’t make anything any better, but it does the generally intended goal of helping him to sober up. “Fuck,” he says bitterly, pressing the heel of his palm into his left eye, staring at the tiles with the other.

_There are good days and bad days just like any other job though,_ Sebastian considers, turning off the shower. He has to laugh at that. _What bullshit._  The shower shuts off and trickles cold down his spine, and the steam in the room clings to his body even as he dries off and brushes his teeth at the mirror before wandering down to his room - towel around his hips - to find fresh clothes.

He feels sober. More so, anyway. He even feels a little less irritable at Moriarty.

Until he gets downstairs, anyway, and Jim says, “Are you done being pathetic now? It was really tiring.”

Sebastian forces a smile. _Alright. If this is the best I’ll get, I’m just gonna take it._

__

“I only do it to wind you up,” he says, sliding onto the kitchen stool.

Moriarty gives him a sly glance and says nothing. Sebastian gets the feeling that Jim, as always, knows he’s full of shit, but is actually letting it slide. _That’ll do._ “I never did blow you,” Sebastian murmurs, pulling a newspaper towards him.

“No?” Jim looks up from his work at the counter - slicing a grapefruit - and frowns, then makes a small noise of surprise. “Oh, no, you didn’t.” He brings the knife to his mouth and drags his tongue along the flat of it, licking away fruit juice. Sebastian’s eyebrows go up, watching the way Moriarty’s tongue catches on the sharp and blossoms red.

He places the knife down on the side and brings a slice of fruit to his mouth, chewing on the flesh, holding it delicately in one hand. He turns to lean against the counter as juice trickles down his chin, and he swipes it away with his thumb and swallows his mouthful before remarking, “Get on with it then.”

“And they say romance is dead,” Sebastian responds, standing off the stool and pointing at the slices on the side, “Save me some of that.” before he sinks to his knees.


	9. Set Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains an adaptation of sorts of A Volume In Vermillion, the first tale from Hound of the D'Ubervilles by Kim Newman.

They have months of radio silence. Business sails along as smoothly as before, as smoothly as it ever has. Sherlock Holmes remains an irritable blip on Sebastian’s radar, but he only seems to crop up every few weeks now, and Sebastian can tolerate that. Usually it’s an update on whatever it is Irene Adler is scheming. Sebastian’s managed to talk to her a few times, and she seems to be a genuinely fascinating woman, but Sebastian wouldn’t know, since usually Jim appears out of thin air to shoo him away.

“She’s not going to seduce me with her feminine wiles, you know,” Sebastian tells Jim once, and Jim just gives him an irritable look and mutters something about strumpets. Sebastian rolls his eyes.

On the subject of Moriarty, little changes there. Sebastian nurses rope burns on his wrists, bruises from a belt around his throat and two broken ribs this week. It’s starting to become the average for what he earns either through sex or a bad attitude. He finds either one reasonably appealing, although he was happy to curse Jim out for the ribs.

The biggest change is the slow move of Jim into Sebastian’s room. It would have made more sense for Sebastian to move to his, but it sort of snuck up on him and Jim is still anal (“Say nothing, Colonel”) about the idea of anyone going into his room. It’s not exactly domestic, though. Jim just tends to lounge around in his room whilst Sebastian wonders just how long he can stay tied up before nerve damage or whatever sets into his hands, and in the process Jim’s moved _things_ in there.

Nothing too weird. A suit or two. A fruit bowl. A kettle, for some reason, which makes Sebastian nervous as he’s never seen Jim make tea with it. The oddest thing would be when Sebastian came home to find men fitting a wrought iron bed with high posters in there, replacing the old pine bed. Jim’s doing. When Jim had demonstrated why he wanted such a thing in Sebastian’s room, he didn’t have any objections.

And then there’s Jim himself, who has taken to sleeping in there with him. A strange sleeper. It took Sebastian a long time to get used to it. Moriarty deviates between taking up the whole bed by himself and being a limpet in his sleep. Unlike everyone else on the planet, he doesn’t look any more peaceful when he’s asleep, either. He just looks a little bit dead.

Which is unnerving.

Sebastian wakes up alone today, which in and of itself isn’t unusual. Moriarty’s often up before him, which Sebastian appreciates because it gives him the time to have a morning cigarette without it winding up stubbed out on his chest. 

He pinches a half-rolled cigarette in his fingers and rubs at an odd-shaped discolouration on his jaw. Moriarty pistol-whipped him last night. Sebastian doesn’t remember what he said but it was probably on purpose. His boss seems to get away virtually unscathed now. Fingermarks here or there, a daring bite mark on his shoulder. Sebastian takes all the heat.

Again, he doesn’t have any complaints about that. Not right now, anyway. Later, probably, when he’s got to do up the cuffs of his shirt and they’ll chafe against his burns and that’ll suck.

Sebastian runs his tongue along the paper and finishes his cigarette, pursing it between his lips as he swings his legs out of bed. He absently scratches his nose and peers around the room for last night’s underwear, then gives up, finding the prize of yesterday’s trousers instead. He pulls them on, snatches his lighter up from his table and then lights his cigarette on the way down the stairs.

“Jim?” He calls, and when that doesn’t get a response he pauses at the bottom of the stairs and calls out into the house, “James?” That usually gets a reaction, even if Jim is in the basement. By the silence that echoes back at him, he’s not in. Sebastian shrugs and taps ash obnoxiously onto the floor, rubbing the stripes on his chest with the tips of his fingers as he wanders into the kitchen. 

There’s the smell of warmed bread in the kitchen, an empty plate on the side and Sebastian hums under his breath approvingly. It’s always good when Jim actually makes food for himself, and he’s clearly not been gone long. There’s also a note, folded up neatly and slid into a pale yellow envelope on the side.

Sebastian holds his cigarette between two fingers as he opens the envelope and pulls out the inside information. Nothing grandly informative, but an address and a polaroid photograph of a grizzled man in his 50s. A name is scrawled beneath it - Lassiter. The note says _Get close and take what you can xx_ , and Sebastian nods firmly as if Moriarty’s here to see.

Now that he thinks about it, Jim probably has cameras around the house and _can_ see him one way or another, so for the sake of it, Sebastian puts two fingers up and waggles them around violently in a few directions.

Breakfast is coffee and an apple before Sebastian cleans himself up and gets headed out of the house. It’s closing in on ten in the morning and Sebastian plans to take full advantage of the day - first he does some incredibly basic, domestic crap: he buys groceries. He doesn’t remember the last time either of them bought milk and living on fruit and bread at this point is getting ridiculous, so he buys some shitty ready meals and crap that Jim will probably refuse to eat, frankly, but then he should’ve been around if he wanted a choice in it.

And when that’s all ditched back at the house, Sebastian tucks the note into his pocket and commits Lassiter’s face to memory. He outfits himself in casual clothes, and he tucks a pistol in the waistband of his jeans, pulling over one of his suit jackets to finish it off, and then he finds himself a taxi to take him a few streets away from the address.

It takes him a while to find it, actually. There’s a _Rise_ and a _Hill_ adjacent to each other with nearly the same name and alright, maybe he spends a good 15 minutes lurking in the shadows across the road from _entirely the wrong house_ , but whatever. Nobody’s here to see that. It wastes some time, anyway. He’s going to be here all day.

He makes the trek into the right street and finds the right house quickly enough, taking up station from behind a tree across the road. It looks reasonably nice. Sort of middle-market. Lassiter is more than likely a private hit, a crime arranged for the sake of petty revenge or not-so-petty revenge, for the sake of debt or simply a strong dislike. It doesn’t matter. If you can pay, Moriarty will help arrange your crime.

_Consulting criminal_ , Sebastian thinks absently. He shakes his head. _‘Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me’ - God, Holmes is a twat._

He pulls his tobacco and papers from his pocket with a wrinkle of his nose, rolling a cigarette that he lights up almost immediately. Sebastian gets bored easily, and this is a long job. Besides, it’s easier to pass yourself off as just pausing in the street to roll a cigarette than it is to explain why you’re standing there watching someone’s house - not that Sebastian anticipates getting caught. He’s damn good at what he does and considering the fact he stands out more than most people, Sebastian considers himself real good at blending in with society.

Better than Jim, anyway. Sebastian’s mind can’t help but wander to the boy Moriarty killed as a teenager. But then no - he remembers Moriarty’s game, Jim from IT, Molly Hooper’s boyfriend. Shy and clumsy and unsure. He was more human than the real thing. _God, that’s a fucking terrifying thought._ He twists his mouth and inhales a lungful of toxins until it hurts, until he coughs sharply, spitting on the pavement.

“Excuse me, you got a lighter?”

“What?” Sebastian says, straightening up and patting himself down. “Yeah, hold on a second.” He burns down the last of his smoke and drops it, crushing it under his heel as he fishes his lighter from his pocket, turning to face the voice behind him.

He should’ve really anticipated something like this, he considers, as the stranger viciously head butts him and everything fades into darkness.

When Sebastian next becomes fully aware, he’s rather tied up, his wrists bound painfully tight behind his back and a noose around his throat. There’s a strip of tape across his mouth, but it’s neither particularly long nor is there any rag in his mouth to keep him truly quiet. The room he’s in is relatively dark, and his head is _pounding_. He shifts his feet, then freezes. He’s propped up on a table and the noose is digging in as it is, and the table isn’t at all stable. At _all_. 

_Fuck_. He swallows and stands as straight as he can. The legs of the table beneath his feet wobble. He casts his eyes upwards. _Am I strung up on a chandelier fixture? This is bullshit._ _Who hangs a man like this anyway? What’s it supposed to accomplish?_

“You’re gonna do everything that I tell you to do, alright?” says a shaking voice. With a disorientated look downwards, Sebastian manages to focus in on his assailant. To his surprise, it’s a slight young woman, with dark skin and long curly hair pulled back tightly behind her head. Sebastian frowns. There’s a bruise on her forehead. He can feel a matching throbbing in his own. _This is seriously who managed to knock me out._

__

He rolls his shoulders and nods. He’s not exactly in a position to disagree. She shuffles her feet and Sebastian realizes, irritably, that she’s got his gun in her hands. “I need you ask you some questions,” she says, and Sebastian raises an eyebrow at her. “Right,” she murmurs, pulling a chair from the side of the room level with the table on standing it. “Don’t scream or anything or,” she chews her lip and says, “Or I’ll shoot you.”

Sebastian nods clearly. She leans towards him, fingers rolling at the corner of the tape which she then tears off in a clear movement before jumping down from the chair again. Sebastian takes in a long gulp of air through his mouth and groans, rolling his neck. His legs stagger and the table wobbles, suddenly tilting to one side on loose legs, and the girl’s eyes go wide as the noose digs into Sebastian’s throat harder. 

_Oh, god._ This really couldn’t get any worse. He’s been bested by a tiny girl and now he’s hanging from a fucking chandelier fixture in some fucking London house with a gun pointing at him and for some reason that he’s sure is a horrible urban legend he’s never thought about confirming, he has a hard-on.

“Oh my fucking god, you _pervert_ ,” she squeals, stepping backwards and waving the gun in the generalized direction of his crotch. “That’s disgusting!” 

_Lady,_ Sebastian somehow manages to think, _this is like an average night in with my not-boyfriend._ He’d laugh at his little joke if he wasn’t so annoyed and if he could breath enough to laugh. 

She steps backwards some more, as if unwanted erections are contagious or if she gets too close it’ll go off much like the bloody gun in her hand which he really can’t see if she’s got the safety on, but she’s clearly never held a gun before because her finger is all over the trigger instead of the guard and - 

“Are you bloody trying to fucking kill me?” He manages to wheeze, all gasping and choked-off. All those cigarettes have probably done him no favours, but for all that she apparently has an inventive mind this girl is no murderer and if she doesn’t right the table so he can _stand_ she’s going to have a very dead hostage sometime soon.

“No!” She squeaks. “I mean, not - ”

“The table, you waffling cunt!” Maybe that wasn’t so nice, but it gets her attention and she scurries forward, gingerly righting the table so that Sebastian can stand upright once more. It eases the pressure everywhere, and Sebastian coughs, glaring down at her. 

“D’you always get a bloody boner when someone tries to hang you?” She squawks, standing away so she’s at a distance again. “I mean, I saw those bruises on your neck, but… I mean, they’re what gave me the idea, it was - ”

“Depends on the day,” Sebastian cuts her off, loudly, “and you _really_ don’t need to talk so much.” The bruises on his neck. Jim’s bruises. _He’s going to be so pissed off when I come home with more._

She scowls at him and waves the gun. “You remember that I’ve got this and you’re hanging up from the ceiling, yeah? Don’t talk shit to me.” She points it at him and says, “What the fuck are you doing lurking around outside my house anyway?”

“Lassiter,” Sebastian spits, since he may as well. He’s not in a position to lie or cover up. “A man named Lassiter at this address. Any ideas, by any chance?” _Think fast, Moran, you need out of this as soon as possible._

“That’s my father,” the girl says, shaking. “But he left over a month ago. He warned me people like you would come for him. I didn’t think he was being serious.”

“ _You’re_ Lassiter’s daughter?” Sebastian questions, eyeing her dark skin. She narrows her eyes and Sebastian shrugs his shoulders - something he sorely regrets, as somehow even that jostles the table and he nearly loses his footing entirely. “What’s your name?” He struggles out, once he’s righted himself again.

“Rachel,” Rachel says, and she runs a hand across her hair. “Are you here to kill my dad? I won’t tell you where he is.”

“No,” Sebastian bluffs, the idea coming to him in that very moment. “No, I was sent here by a - a bloody concerned party. They wanted to make sure he was alive, y’see, wanted to make sure your pa was okay.” Rachel’s lip wobbles and she lowers the gun - not much, but a little. It’s progress.

“Are you being serious?” She whispers, and Sebastian thinks, _God, women are fucking simple._

__

“Of course I am!” Sebastian pleas, putting on his best voice of frustration. “Why would I lie? What’ve I to gain?” He whines, casting his eyes upwards desperately. Jim would be proud. Or not, because this woman really is horribly simple, it seems.

But then Rachel narrows her eyes again. “You’re fucking awful for a bloke supposedly trying to protect us.”

“Rachel, please,” Sebastian begs, making a show of his legs trembling under the exertion of trying to stay upright enough that he doesn’t choke, crying, “I didn’t know he had a daughter! What was I supposed to think?”

Rachel chews her lip. “I suppose I should let you down.”

Sebastian smiles widely at her, tries to express fear and settles on a grimace of gratitude instead and gasps out, “Please.” _This is too easy. So easy. Candy from a baby._ His eyes land on her chest, and then he swivels them away, biting his tongue to stop himself from smiling. _Not such a baby._

She clambers up onto that chair again, leaning up and grasping at the rope above Sebastian’s head, tugging it until it comes loose from the fixtures and tumbles down about his shoulders. Sebastian gratefully jumps from the table, feet slamming into the floor and sending a sting all through his ankles, and then Rachel unties his hands. Sebastian listens and hears her put the gun down on the table. _Good._

__

“Thank you so much, Rachel,” Sebastian simpers, rubbing at his wrists as he turns to face her.

And then he head butts her hard in the face and she goes out like a light.

“Stupid bitch,” Sebastian mutters, staring down at her unconscious body. He shakes his head and grabs his gun, thinking. _This was a set up. Lassiter gone a month? Jim would’ve known._

__

He tucks it away and cleans himself up, taking a moment to pat at his throat and make sure it’s all intact, and makes his way out of the house very immediately.

_Why did you set me up?_

__

The answer, unfortunately, becomes glaringly clear as Sebastian takes the first cab he can find and hauls ass out of the area, getting back to their house as fast as he can. He sees the unusual cars and the people lined up outside their flat long before he actually processes what they are, and when he does, he yells, “Stop!” at the cabbie, shoves a twenty into their hand and bolts out, taking to the pavements in order to observe.

There’s three cars. Two with blacked out windows, but otherwise ordinary looking. Nothing flash. _Government,_ Sebastian notes. Then there’s a third plain grey car with a line of blue lights - off at the moment - on the top and he thinks, _Police._

_Oh, fuck, Jim._

__

Every officer - whether they’re government or police, Sebastian can’t tell individually - is plain clothes, and they’ve obviously searched the house going by the open front door. He frowns and paces up and down the street, doing his best not to draw attention. This is why Jim wanted him out of the house all day.

He can’t see Jim anywhere, of course. Sebastian has a feeling that Jim’s either gone already or in one of the cars. Something tells him Jim hasn’t just swanned off whilst the police storm their home.

He’s been _taken_.


	10. The Empty House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A minor revision: the use of August for the name of Sebastian's sister was guesswork, but lucky guesswork, it seems - canonically (see: Professor Moriarty - The Hound Of The D'Ubervilles by Kim Newman) her name is Augusta. I figure it can't hurt to change that, so she appears as such in this chapter and I'm slowly editing back into the earlier chapters. There's been some generalised editing in all chapters which means they require reposting anyway.

The emptiness of the house gets to Sebastian after two days. Their landlady assures him that Jim’s probably fine, but that does fuck all to help, and Sebastian ends up yelling at her and he only a little bit feels bad. 

After a week and a half when the last of his bruises fade the weight of it all really starts to sink in. Jim Moriarty is _gone_. For months, he’s been all that Sebastian’s had. He’s been Sebastian’s only real focus, his cause to exist - Jim gave him a reason to be more than a sad, lonely man who’d probably end up in jail for downloading dodgy porn or for a hefty drug habit. He was Sebastian’s saviour, taking him from the crush of normality. Giving him access to the hunt once more.

And now Sebastian’s alone again, just in a better house.

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. Does he carry on Jim’s business for him in his absence? Sebastian doesn’t know anything about anything and nothing’s written down - it’s all locked away in Jim’s head. He’s too clever to be stupid enough to write things down. There’s not even an address book. Jim has a phone, but that must’ve gone with him when he was taken. Besides, Sebastian wouldn’t put it past Jim to have an entirely empty phone.

So Sebastian resolves to just have a go at existing until Jim comes back, if he does at all. There’s money enough that he doesn’t need a job - for now, anyway. Most of the money is Jim’s. Sebastian hasn’t decided yet if he’s above stealing from his boss.

_We’ll see when the money runs dry, I guess._

It’s pessimistic thinking, of course. Hopefully Moriarty is neither dead nor in jail for life. 

“Are you okay?” Augusta asks him, not even face to face but over the phone when she gives him a call after approximately eleven days without Moriarty around. Sebastian’s lying on the sofa at the time, a bowl of dry cereal on his stomach. He’s been picking at it one bit at a time. 

“Just fine,” Sebastian responds, feeling as empty as he sounds as he peers at the Discovery Channel. “Did you know male lions kill cubs sometimes?” There’s the static crackle of an irritable sigh. Sebastian rolls his eyes.

“You don’t sound fine,” Augusta presses, and Sebastian rolls his eyes again. The fact she can’t see him makes no different. He tosses a piece of cereal into his mouth, catching it through the air.

“How can you tell me I don’t sound fine? We barely speak.” He throws a piece of cereal at the lions humping on the television now. Jim would hate a program like this. He finds wasps far more interesting, except nobody wants to make a television program about fucking wasps. “Maybe you’ve forgotten how I bloody sound.”

“I grew up with you.”

“Right, how could I forget, and the fact you rarely saw me over 18 years barely makes a difference to that, right?” Sebastian picks up the bowl and sets it on the floor so he can shift his hips. He’s not made for lying on sofas and he’s barely moved from this one in three days, save to piss. “Spare me the loving sister bull crap. I don’t _feel_ it.”

There’s a long, unhappy silence on the end of the line. Sebastian knows he shouldn’t have said that. He shouldn’t say anything about what he doesn’t feel at all. The list is bottomless. Sebastian’s not going to apologize, though. _What’s the use in being the unhappy youngest child if you don’t exploit it?_

__

“I’m only trying to help you,” Augusta says finally, quietly. “You sound sad.” There’s a blip of a button being pressed, and the line cuts off. Sebastian doesn’t feel bad. It’s not as if she could understand, or help, in any way. How would he explain this one? _I feel like shite because my boss - who fucks and hits me in equal measure - got taken in by the government and now I don’t really know what to do. Did I mention he’s a criminal mastermind, sister? D’you fancy getting lunch?_

At fourteen days, Sebastian realizes he’s not had sex or jerked off in fourteen days, and even when he was fucking Moriarty he was still making time to jerk off _over_ Moriarty. Thinking about how long it’s been gets him hot enough, with the need to put an end to the sudden dry spell, and Sebastian works a hand over his cock in the shower and comes biting his wrist and thinking about being fucked.

It’s as vivid as if Moriarty were still there. He’s always so vivid in Sebastian’s head. But the bite marks on his shoulders and the claws on his ribs don’t reappear, reopen, no matter how hard Sebastian thinks about it. No matter how wild his imagination is.

So he doesn’t jerk off after that because it leaves him about as hollow as everything else does. Sebastian’s as self-deprecating as the next man - maybe a little bit more, even - and just because he gets off on an emotional battering from Jim it doesn’t mean he’s gonna make himself suffer. What’s the point in that? It’s pathetic.

He’s half expecting the police to come back and search the house. again Any other situation and he’d be on edge all the time, gun at the ready, although when it comes to the matter of guns everything’s hidden away in the hollows of walls and he isn’t like to move it. That’s what gave Sebastian the truth of it. Jim - and likely their landlady - had shifted everything at one point or another. The police obviously found nothing of evidence in the house. And they didn’t come back for Sebastian. So preparation had occurred and Jim knew they were coming for him.

_Bastard is one step ahead of everyone. Not even one. More like five._

But aside from the hiding of everything illicit and awful that they own, well…

It’s hard to really care about the prospect of the police coming back for him.

Sebastian leaves the house, properly leaves it, after twenty-one days. Previously he’s just been popping out to buy tobacco and papers, and sometimes food, but today he’s actually leaving the house to do something. Sebastian is making a visit to Baker Street. 

It’s one of those things that seems like a really good idea when you’re up far too late and you’re going insane from isolation, and it’s such a good idea that the next day you get up and put the plan into action anyway.

However, when Sebastian arrives in Baker Street and stares at the front door of Sherlock Holmes’s house, he’s not quite sure why he’s here. He doesn’t _want_ to be here. This is probably among the stupidest fucking ideas he’s ever had, and Sebastian’s said and done quite a few stupid things in his time. Fucked a fellow colonel’s daughter when he was serving, for example, that was a bad one.

Sebastian walks down the street from the address, scrubbing a hand through his hair. He scratches his thigh until he notices and slaps his hand flat against his stomach, frowning as he paces. What does he do now he’s here? He’s come all this way. He was so sure he’d _do_ something, but he’s not even armed.

He’s pacing back up past their front door when it opens, and John Watson steps out. Sebastian stops, a moment of pause to watch as the man bumbles to close the front door and tuck his keys into his pockets. Sebastian shakes his head. What a sad looking man. How is he _anybody_ ’ _s_ right-hand man? _He looks about as useful as when you step in a steaming pile of dog shit._

__

Sebastian’s decision is a quick one - now he’s here, he may as well do something, right? So he looks down and walks too-far in Watson’s direction, and slams his shoulder hard into that of the doctor’s. He staggers to the ground.

Sebastian takes care in apologizing and helping him up; the blustering idiot dusts himself up and glances at Sebastian. He holds the gaze, a hand locked in Watson’s where he pulls him from the ground.

_Go on. Take a good long look into my eyes. If Jim doesn’t come back, they’ll be the last thing you see before you die._

__

“Have a nice day,” Sebastian insists, and he drops John Watson’s hand and walks away without a single glance back.

Petty? Very. Pointless? Incredibly so.

But he’s drifting.

What’s he _supposed_ _to do_?

The house is still empty when he gets back. 

After forty-five days, Sebastian’s lost weight. It’s usually hard to tell, because he’s tall and wiry as it is, but he’s always had a soft stomach. It’s stretching kind of thin, leather warped across his bones. It’s around then - or maybe that’s around day forty-seven. Sebastian loses count after a while. But either way, it’s around then that Sebastian gets one of the more surprising phone calls he’s ever had.

“My big brother,” Christabelle Moran coos down the phone, her accent warped by years of living in a different country. “Bastian, brother, how _are_ you?”

Sebastian’s not sure how to respond at first. His phone’s making an ugly indent in his ear and his fingers are white from holding it so hard. It takes time for him to place who’s speaking, with such familiarity, but - bloody _Bastian_. Another blasted nickname that he’s been trying to discourage.

He sits up from his place stretched out on the kitchen floor (no, he’s not sure how he came to be there, either) and rests one arm across his lap and says, trying to sound like he _doesn’t_ want to throw up, “Sister?”

She laughs, a noise that sounds like someone’s throwing stones down a disposal unit. Sebastian brings his palm to his face and inwardly groans as she titters, “Who else?”

Sebastian chews that question over. There’s a million people who could have an older sibling they insist on calling Bastian. He’d so much rather it was one of those other million people, because then he’d only have to tell them that _sorry, try a different Moran._ “Cold caller? Wrong number? Or my other sister?”

“Silly, Augusta’s the reason I’m calling you at all.” Figures. This is probably because Sebastian’s been ignoring Augusta’s calls since she whined about him sounding sad. He won’t apologize. He won’t do Augusta the courtesy of cutting off her calls quickly, either, because that would indicate he was alive. Let her fret.

Sebastian always did underestimate his big sister, though. That’s the trouble with being the middle child, especially to two sisters. Women are crafty and Sebastian should know better - of course she went to the little sibling, who Sebastian doesn’t even have in his phone because he’s not spoken to her for the better part of five years because she’s spent the better part of ten living in the state of New York.

Christabelle is a lot more like Sebastian than he cares to admit. She doesn’t care for family, either, preferring to forge a path that doesn’t involve Augusta or Augustus or Mama. She has a little more drive, maybe, and less of a penchant for killing things, but she’s as wicked all the same, but wicked in the traditional temptress sort of way.

Actually, she’s quite like Irene Adler, which Sebastian doesn’t really want to think about.

Crafty, _crafty_ Augusta though, getting the other siblings to check up on him. Christabelle probably thinks this is hilarious.

“Let me guess,” Sebastian begins.

Christabelle cuts him off. “She typed me a long email about how you’re being an idiot and I needed to kick your ass into shape. Let her know you’re alive so that she’ll get off my back, Bastian. Don’t be a dick. Also, it’s costing me a load to call you, I’m expecting some kind of reimbursement.” She clears her throat and Sebastian pinches the bridge of his nose.

“So out with it,” she says, “What’s the problem? A girl? Lack thereof? Testicular cancer?”

Sebastian looks down at his chest, and scratches his scars through his shirt. Cancer’s probably the easiest explanation. _Sister, I have this problem that’s eating me alive, I’ve lost weight and it’s covered me in marks. It’s been nearly fifty days and I should probably get treatment._

But that’s dramatic. And too depressing for Sebastian to fathom. So he says, ”Girl.” It’s not quite true, but he can spin that one, can’t he? The truth’s too weird even for his witch of a little sister.

“A _girl_? Bastian, brought to his knees by a girl?”

Sebastian leans against the cupboard nearest to him and says, “Hard to believe, I know. Not happened since I was fifteen and your bloody friend - ”

“Rosie!” Christabelle cheers. “She’s great. Or was In prison for insurance fraud now, but she _was_ great.”

“Of course you call the girl who lied to me and stole all my birthday money _great_ ,” Sebastian mutters. Christabelle laughs again. That awful sound. 

Rosie was the second girl Sebastian ever fucked and she then proceeded to lie to him that she was pregnant in order to swindle him out of his birthday money. Christabelle and her friends started being awful very young. Taught Sebastian a lesson and a half about life, though.

“Tell me about this girl who’s stolen your heart,” Christabelle sighs, and Sebastian can picture her kicking her feet up in the air, the girlish child-like behavior that she’s never dropped.

“It’s not that big a deal, I just would rather my sisters didn’t bug me about this shit,” Sebastian says, in the futile hope that she’ll get the idea.

“I’m not going to pretend I really care, Bastian,” she sighs, “but tell me so I can report back to Augusta so she’ll leave me alone and go back to annoying you instead.”

“I was fucking a girl and things were reasonably great and now she’s gone, and that’s it, Chris,” Sebastian grumbles. “Just leave it.”

“Hm,” Christabelle says, and then she tells him, “You should tell me more over lunch.”

Sebastian’s stomach lurches and he scrambles upright to his feet and he says, “What?” Dread balls in his stomach. “You didn’t fucking - you didn’t - ”

“I figured it was time for a trip home,” Christabelle says, “Didn’t you notice I was ringing you from a British number? I was joshing you about the reimbursements. Anyway. Lunch. Tomorrow. Me, you, Augusta - the Moran siblings, all back together, yes?”

“You _hate_ being a sibling group,” Sebastian growls, pacing the length of the kitchen angrily.

“Not nearly as much as I know you do, Bastian,” she purrs, and says, “I’ll email you the details. Don’t be late. Tomorrow, brother. Have a good evening.”

She hangs up.

_My own sister is_ worse _than Irene Adler,_ Sebastian realises, in a terrifying jolt. 


	11. Girl Problems

Maybe he was being dramatic in comparisons of his baby sister to The Woman. It’s entirely unfair to Irene Adler, after all. She’s a wonderful woman. Dangerous and beautiful. Christabelle Moran, meanwhile, is just wicked, twisted, _mean._

__

“I thought it was just going to be us siblings,” Sebastian says, as faux-cheerfully as he can as he sits down at the restaurant table between Christabelle and Augusta. He doesn’t think he pulls it off at all - he’s stiff, sore, all too aware of the bags under his eyes. He couldn’t be bothered to shave and his outfit is haphazard at best, all untucked shirts and a wonky tie. 

In contrast, Christabelle is done up in sapphire blue, a slinky dress down to her knees, her hair curled up on top of her head. Augusta’s made the effort of a dress, too, but it’s a work dress, something she obviously went to the office in today.

“Mama asked,” Christabelle says, that irritable New York-touched accent grating on Sebastian’s nerves already. “I couldn’t very well turn them down.” 

Opposite the children, see, are the parents. Augustus Moran is fat and red-faced, chewing his bushy mustache, and their mother is a proper lady, elegant in pearls with her hands folded in her lap. “Sebastian,” she says. 

“Mama,” Sebastian responds, and takes her hand to squeeze when she extends it. Don’t sons always have soft spots for their mothers?

He’s less courteous to his father. “Dad,” he spits, venom in every letter. 

Christabelle kisses Sebastian’s cheek, leaving a lipstick smear that he scrubs at unhappily with the cuff of his sleeve, and says, “Isn’t this great? The whole family. Well.” She looks past Sebastian to squint at their older sister. “Apart from Augusta’s rabble.” 

“My _rabble_?” Augusta bites back, but it’s good natured in its own way. Sebastian doesn’t understand it. He just draws his hands towards himself and opens the restaurant menu. Steak. Steak would be a good choice. God, he hasn’t eaten a proper meal in far too long. His stomach actually rumbles just thinking about having a proper hot meal that someone else has prepared and that his sisters or parents are going to pay for.  

Or he hopes they’ll pay for, anyway. This wasn’t his idea and he didn’t want to come. He’s _not_ going to fork out on top of all that, no matter what.

“You look thin,” Augustus says, and Sebastian slowly turns his eyes upwards to his father.

His father’s words are, as always, so devoid of emotion when directed at him. He doesn’t sound at all concerned that Sebastian is thin. He doesn’t sound like he cares at all.

Sebastian envisions telling his father everything he thinks of him and then closing his hands around that blubbery, meaty throat, choking the life out of him, but there’s no fun in essentially harpooning a whale. He doesn’t say anything in response. He’s got nothing witty here.

“Augusta told us you got a job,” his mother says, and Sebastian more kindly turns his eyes on her.

He tries to remember the lie that he told his sister. “Bodyguard.” 

“Are you enjoying it?" 

Sebastian weighs his answer carefully. “Good days and bad days,” he says eventually, and it’s the wrong answer even as it rolls off his tongue. Not unacceptable, but to him simply _wrong_. There’s no such - no such _thing_ with Moriarty. Working for him, you just have days where you think the man you murder in the name of is a human and the rest of the time where you realise he isn’t. “Can’t complain,” he adds.

“You look unwell,” she says, a frown creasing her brow.

“Flu,” is the lie that Sebastian comes up with, but it’s not his voice unless the tricks of ventriloquism have suddenly become more than simple misdirection. Everyone looks to the source of the voice, stood at the end of their table, dressed in a fine grey suit with his hands tucked in his pockets and a kind smile on his face.

Sebastian’s mouth drops open a little. “Jim,” he says, but it’s like his lips and tongue have gone numb, like he doesn’t even say it at all. Moriarty smiles sympathetically at him.

“He’s been down with the flu,” Jim expands, walking around to Sebastian’s side of the table and resting a hand on his shoulder. The other Morans seem little more than confused. Sebastian stares at the fingers curling into his shoulder, and stretches his palms out flat against the table to stop them trembling. “We had a bust up a week ago and I’ve been - kind of neglectful of you, haven’t I, love?”

He leans down and presses his lips to Sebastian’s temple. “Entirely my fault, of course. It was so silly.” 

Augustus’s face is beet red now, eyes wide, his shoulders hunched, and he says, “Who the devils are you?” 

“Oh,” Jim sighs, straightening up. “I’m so sorry.” He extends a hand that the elder Moran tentatively shakes. “I’m Jim. Sebastian’s partner.” He then takes the hand of Sebastian’s mother, and kisses her knuckles and says, “It’s so lovely to meet you.” 

“Partner?” Augusta says in disbelief. She moves her eyes from Jim to Sebastian. “What on _earth_?”  

Sebastian swallows and finds he can’t. His throat is all closed up and dry, his heart is hammering, and his head is reeling. Shouldn’t he be saying something? Making some kind of objection? 

“We’ve been together for a good while now, yes,” Moriarty insists, and he extends a hand to Augusta and then Christabelle. “It’s an honor to finally meet all of you. Sebastian’s told me so much about you.”

Christabelle stands then and says, in a voice that would drive Sebastian to insanity if he felt as if he could move to feel something about that, “Oh, let me move. You _must_ sit next to your… partner.” She shifts into a new seat.

“Thank you, you’re too sweet,” Jim sighs, and he takes a seat beside Sebastian, linking the fingers of their hands on top of the table and then resting his other hand on Sebastian’s thigh. 

Sebastian turns his head to look at him and is greeted with a soft, wet, warm kiss on the mouth. He should push him off. Tell him to bugger right off. Demand explanations. Correct his now very confused family, at least. 

Sebastian does none of those things. He kisses back, leaning into Jim and the taste he’s been missing. Then those lips are gone and saying, “You don’t mind me joining you for lunch, do you? I’m so sorry for just dropping in and not giving due warning. I thought I’d surprise my Sebastian.”

Christabelle, apparantly taking some kind of delight in this, leans forward and rests her elbows on the table. Her eyes sparkle. “So Bastian. This is the _girl_ you were having problems with?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry (that I'm not sorry) for putting in another 'cliffhanger'.


	12. Flesh And Blood

The novelty of having Jim back wears off after about ten minutes, when Sebastian gets his senses back and Moriarty strokes too high on his thigh whilst telling Christabelle that they met “At work. His boss is my boss, and we met eyes across the function room, and it was just _love_ , you know? Real honest love, that’s what we have.”

When Christabelle turns to their parents and says, “Well, isn’t that _something_?”, Sebastian brushes his nose against Jim’s ear affectionately and whispers, “I’m going to fucking kill you.” 

“Sweetheart,” Jim murmurs, kissing Sebastian’s lips gently, “I’m going to _break_ you when we get home.” He nudges the tip of his nose against Sebastian’s, then squeezes his thigh and they all turn their attention to Mr and Mrs Moran.  

“Sebastian,” his mother says slowly. “You’re gay?” 

“No,” Sebastian says sharply, frowning. He’s not. He’s not even sure his attraction to Moriarty is anything to do with what body parts he has. He doesn’t want to say what they have transcends sexuality, because what they have is an intense sexual relationship that entirely revolves around Moriarty’s obsession with being Sebastian’s superior, but Sebastian can’t say they’d be any different if either one of them happened to be a woman. 

“Sebastian,” Jim chastises, voice sad and soft. Sebastian glares at him. “You can tell them. They _know_ now. You don’t have to hide anymore.” He turns to Sebastian’s father and sighs, “He’s been angry for so long.”  

“I’ve noticed that, actually,” Augusta says, with a frown. “He’s always loved rebelling. He just had to  strike out at anyone and everyone around him. His entire life.” 

“That’s what happens,” Moriarty clicks his tongue. “I was the same until I had someone’s love to show me the light.” He smiles, sweet and beautiful and christ, it’s frightening that Jim Moriarty can make himself appear sweet and beautiful. But it’s just another _disguise_ , another Jim who works in I.T.. It’s a mask. Sebastian’s seen the monster underneath. “I like to think that I’ve done the same for our Sebastian.” 

Jim’s thumb rubs incessant little circles on Sebastian’s trousers, his fingers warm and intrusive, pressed against the inside of his thigh and squeezing. Sebastian has to bite his tongue, and he shuffles in his seat, trying to discourage his boss. As if that’d actually work - but he gets points for trying, right? 

“And he’s happier now?” Augusta says, and Sebastian frowns. _Am I not fucking here or something?_   

Jim’s hand slips up, casually groping at his cock through his trousers. Sebastian’s jaw tightens and he glares at Jim, who is smiling happily at his sister. “Definitely,” he sighs, and squeezes his hand, rubbing his palm down. “We have our fights, but what couples don’t?” 

 _They probably don’t break glass and give each other black eyes in those fights,_ Sebastian wants to say. Instead he says, “I still like women.” He’s entirely ignored as Christabelle says, “This explains why he dresses so much better than he used to.” 

“I helped with that,” Jim remarks, smiling widely, and he rubs his hand across Sebastian’s cock. Sebastian picks up one of the pre-laid bits of cutlery and squeezes it, sinking his teeth into his tongue in an effort to stifle any reactions. He so does not want to be hard. He so does not want to feel like this, to have his blood pumping too loudly in his head and his pulse racing, his cock aching against Jim’s touch through two layers of fabric. And he definitely doesn’t like that he’s a little bit thrilled by the fact his sisters and parents have no idea of what’s going on.

“God knows what he’d dress like if he’d had to do that himself his entire life,” Jim teases, with his voice, whilst he teases with his fingers under the table. “Thank the lord for army uniforms, hm?”

“Right,” Sebastian mutters, making an effort to chip into the conversation, even though he’d rather spontaneously combust if he’s being honest. He finally drops a hand under the table and smacks Jim’s wrist, trying to fend him off, but his boss just squeezes his cock. Sebastian’s mouth twists. _Arsehole._

__

“Explains why you could never hold down a girlfriend,” Augusta says, doing that thing again where she tries to sound caring but it’s actually a veiled insult. Sebastian’s starting to think she doesn’t even do it on purpose. He narrows his eyes at her. 

“Are you alright, Sebastian?” His mother inquires, frowning gently. “You look worried. You don’t have to be. I, personally, don’t understand, but I’ve come to terms with it; things are different now - it’s okay for men to be with men, even okay for women to like women and for people to get sex changes and - “ 

“My son’s a homosexual,” Augustus interrupts his wife, spittle flying from his mouth. Sebastian grimaces. He’s been waiting for the old fat man to speak. To express his opinion - or _fact_ , as Augustus likes to call it. Children and wife turn their heads to look at him. Sebastian’s mother looks unsurprised at her husband. His two daughters look at least a little concerned. “Bloody faggots, that’s what you two are!” 

Sebastian’s ears burn hot and his jaw tightens, but Moriarty’s spine stiffens at that word and that gets his attention. _Oh good,_ Sebastian thinks. _You do still feel shit sometimes._ Maybe it’s not a direct slight on Moriarty, but it’s a slight on his act, his creation and character, and that makes it a slight against him. And whatever he says, Moriarty does have some semblance of real feeling towards Sebastian, even if it isn’t much more than owner to pet.  

“What did you call us?” Jim says quietly, and his eyes are black, and cold. His voice is still playing, soft and sad, his pose still the sweet boyfriend, but his eyes aren’t. They’re dark and full of murder, which is a much more normal expression. Sebastian can almost hear the cogs turning, the decisions and outcome and possibilities, the math working in Moriarty’s mind as he decides what to do. 

Sebastian isn’t going to let his bloody boss pretend-defend him. He straightens his spine - quickly taking the opportunity to smack Jim’s hand away from his crotch - and he leans forward and says, “Disappointed, Dad?” 

Augustus huffs and heaves, skin the color of blood, eyes wide and bulging. “I won’t have this,” he seethes. 

“Dad,” Augusta says softly, and Sebastian talks over the both of them. 

“This is just one more thing that I could do wrong, isn’t it? I’m the best fucking shooter that army ever had. Not boasting, Dad dearest. They had to find _excuses_ to get rid of me, because I’m a damn horrible person but I’m a fucking good Colonel, a fucking amazing killer. I’m a _success_.” He’s _snarling_ , like a mad animal, fists bunched on the table. 

He leans across the length of it, gets right up close in his father’s ugly face and sneers, “The only fucking success in this family. You’re a fat wheezing walking heart attack, Mum bows to your every word, Christabelle’s an Americanized whore, and Augusta - Augusta’s just _boring_ and ordinary.”

“But no, to you I’m the failure.” Sebastian waves a hand and clears his throat. His blood is pounding in his head. “But you know - it’s okay. Because whilst I’ve always considered you a complete cunt I’ve never considered you my family, not the way it really means.” He straightens up and pushes his chair back, puffing angrily as he stares down on his family. 

“I killed and skinned snakes to sell on markets,” Sebastian starts, counting off examples on his fingers. “There was the tiger - me and that kitten, we were close for as long as I hunted and gutted her. I wanted to skin her and take her home but she was too heavy so I took some of those big teeth instead, so we’re still pretty near and dear, actually. There’s every soldier I’ve riddled with holes. I’ve picked off teenaged fighters from a hundred feet with a rifle and felt closer to them then I ever have any of you,” he tells them. It feels satisfying to say, and his sisters and parents look at him like they’ve never seen him before.

He supposes they haven’t. They’ve seen him as their brother or son. Not as Sebastian Moran. Not as the second most dangerous man in London, and oh, is he _dangerous_ , and now the first-most-dangerous is back beside him and Sebastian can do anything.

His flesh-and-blood stare at him, open-mouthed. His mother’s trembling. Sebastian doesn’t even feel badly for that. He pushes his hair back, running his fingers through it, and he says, “Have a nice meal.”

Sebastian walks away, and he keeps walking, and he doesn’t stop until he’s two streets away and he can hear Jim crow joyfully, “Now _that_ was a brilliant performance! So dramatic! You had me hooked on every word.”

Sebastian scowls, stopping mid-pace and then turning off the street at the nearest alley. He stops then, pulling off his tie as he listens to the steps of Jim approaching behind him. He balls it up and tucks it in his jacket pocket, and then peels off said jacket, shrugging it away and laying it carelessly on the edge of a dumpster.

“Could’ve had less of a ‘my parents don’t love me and I’m very misunderstood’ vibe to it, though,” Jim drawls, as Sebastian rolls his shoulders and neck, popping his spine. He unbuttons his cuffs and rolls them up, kneeling down to make sure his shoelaces are tied tightly enough. He tucks them under the tongue and licks his thumb, wiping a scuff mark off the toe.

“But then of course I suppose you were ranting to your family.”

Sebastian straightens up, turns around, grabs Moriarty, and swings to crunch his fist into his face, and then he drives a knee hard into his stomach.

“You fucking cunt!” He exclaims, pushing Jim away from himself. Jim winces, doubling over, but even as he’s clutching his stomach he’s _grinning_ , the obnoxious wanker.  

“Oh, baby boy _,_ ” Moriarty sighs as Sebastian lurches at him, slamming him into the brick wall of the alley, “I’ve missed you.” He makes a choked off little noise when Sebastian punches him in the stomach, then giggles and takes a fistful of Sebastian’s hair.

Those _eyes_. Sebastian had forgotten how dark and endless they are, and as Moriarty forces him to stare into them now, he’s almost… missed them. No, that’s the wrong word. Sebastian’s not sure there’s a word for it, the sensation that sears through him when he gazes into those black holes and gets that old, now familiar feeling like he’s about to be burned alive, especially after all this time, these days and weeks without it.

Without _him._  

Moriarty’s hand touches Sebastian’s jaw, rubbing across the scruff that’s verging on beard by this point. “You look like shit,” he says, sweetly, “and this beard is disgusting.”

Sebastian can tell the next words out of his mouth are gonna be “Don’t kiss me”, so he does, as hard as he can, slamming Moriarty back against brick. He kisses him until it turns to biting and he tastes blood, till their teeth clack together and Sebastian’s _so_ hard, _jesus fucking christ._  

Jim’s all warm and real and actually _here_ , no longer a ghost in the back of his mind but the actual ghoul in the flesh. Sebastian really wants to fuck him, in a way he hasn’t before. Moriarty seems content to simply be cocky with how badly he’s affecting Sebastian - he’s got his head casually tilted back against the brick, exposing the pale flesh of his throat (Sebastian wraps his fingers around that, presses his thumb up under Jim’s chin), his legs parted and his fingers playing at Sebastian’s sides. He’s smiling.

Sebastian wants to turn him over and fuck him until his thighs are shaking and he’s crying and his face is roughed up by the brick and his voice is hoarse from shouting. He wants to fuck him until he _crumbles_ and when he smiles it trembles and wavers, and he’s not nearly so smug anymore.  

But even if he could fuck him right here, Moriarty would never break.

“Are we just going to stand here, entwined like lovers all day?” Jim questions, eyebrows raised. His   voice hums through his throat, buzzing against Sebastian’s hand. “Or are you going to do something?”

“Get on your knees,” Sebastian demands foolishly, pressing himself all up against Jim, squeezing his hand against his airway. “I want you on your knees. I want you to get on your knees, and - ”

“I’m sorry,” Jim interrupts, giggling obnoxiously loud. He gestures between them. “Did you forget how this works, you and me? The bit where you don’t get a say in anything and where you’re essentially Daddy’s little fuck toy? Or not so little, you know.”

Sebastian didn’t forget that, but he forgot himself. He scowls, upset, stubborn and silent. Jim’s hand fists in his hair again and he leans up on tip toe and whispers, “I think you should be the one on your knees.” He yanks and Sebastian falls down on one knee, grunting. He glowers up at Moriarty and gets a smile in return, leery and pleased.

“Both knees, darling,” he says, smoothing back Sebastian’s hair before threading his fingers into it again. He pats Sebastian’s face with his other hand. “I want you to suck my cock, not propose.”

Sebastian can feel a muscle in his cheek twitch. He’s about to relent and lower his other knee when Jim drives a foot into his shin, forcing him down anyway; he grunts, gritting his teeth as the fall yanks at his scalp. “Better,” Moriarty says, voice sickly sweet. “Now be a good boy." 

Sebastian begrudgingly obliges, sneaking a hand between his legs to quickly squeeze his cock and stave off the ache as he undoes the loop of Jim’s belt with the other hand. He touches Jim through the expensive fabric of his suit trousers, just briefly, and unbuttons them, pulling the zipper down with a slightly wavering hand.  

It’s a crude metaphor, but all the same when he finally takes the length of Moriarty’s cock in his hand all he can think is that he’s like a starving man, finally given a meal. His eyes flutter shut as he takes the head into his mouth, sucking before he slides his lips down. His free hand grasps at Jim’s hip, grasping at bare skin, soft and white and clean and remarkable beneath Sebastian’s pallid hands and all the dirt beneath his chewed fingernails. 

Jim’s cock is hot and heavy on his tongue. After only a minute Sebastian’s jaw starts to ache, his face burning from the effort of being _good at this_ \- it’s not as easy as porn stars make it look, he would stake his life on that - and of keeping teeth in the clear, keeping his breathing as clear as possible. 

Jim lets out indulgent little sighs cut up with giggles and murmurs of “Such a good boy”, phrases that make Sebastian feel like a whore - but then again, he is on his knees in an alleyway, lips around the cock of a man he loathes and needs all at once. That sounds an awful lot like a whore to Sebastian.

Jim’s fingers have made a tangled mess of Sebastian’s hair, still tugging. Sebastian’s head is throbbing just a little, his scalp burning, and between what’s in his mouth and the want south of his waist it’s all a little… overwhelming.

He takes his mouth from Jim’s cock and gasps in lungfuls of fresh air, stroking his hand up and down that length whilst he drops his other hand to undo his trousers. Sebastian knows he’ll be punished for this, probably won’t get to touch his dick before Jim forces him to get back to his _job_ , but as ever it’s like he’s trapped between a place of consciously wanting to be pushed around and being desperate enough to try and get his own way.

Sebastian gets exactly as far as he thought he would: he undoes his trousers, gets the zipper down and almost has a hand in his boxers when Moriarty smacks him across the face with the back of his hand and breathes, “Did I say you could do that?’

Sebastian glowers reproachfully and takes Jim’s cock back into his mouth. God, his dick is aching, but now he knows he won’t get to come until his boss has. _Chain of command, I suppose._  

He bobs his mouth up and down his length, like a dutiful, obedient slut; he remembers to relax his throat when Jim starts to pull him closer, urging his cock further than it should go, then easing his hips back again. 

One of Moriarty’s hands leaves Sebastian’s hair; the release of pressure makes him inhale sharply, distracted, and then he focuses again. His pulse, already hammering, rises when Jim rubs the tips of his fingers against Sebastian’s lips where they’re all stretched out around his cock. He wants to moan but obviously his mouth is full, and Jim’s tittering laughter doesn’t help anything.

“Soon,” Jim whispers, and it sounds like a threat but rings in his ears like the sweetest promise he’s ever heard. He hums pleasantly, his tone conversational as he remarks, “You never got lunch, did you? Well…”

Sebastian rolls his eyes up to look at him, inhaling deeply through his nostrils. There’s a lull for a moment, and then Jim stutters his hips forward with a delighted groan and his hand flies back to Sebastian’s hair, forcing him into place as the tip of his cock bumps his throat.

Sebastian’s eyes water and shit, it’s hard to breath, and then without warning Jim’s coming and Sebastian’s trying his best to swallow bitter liquid - he has to pull off, coughing and swearing furiously, utterly humiliated and with drips of Moriarty’s come down his chin. “You _bastard_ ,” he wheezes, but his boss looks nothing less than pleased with himself. 

Sebastian can’t stay horribly mad when Jim swipes a thumb across his chin with the light hearted comment of, “You’ve got a little something on your face” and then proceeds to suck his own come from his thumb.

Sebastian staggers to his feet, his knees weak, and he presses a hand against the brick to steady himself. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and breathes, voice hoarse, still feeling as ashamed as he did a minute ago, “Please.”

“Please what?” Jim blinks, and Sebastian groans unhappily. _Now’s not the time to play cunting innocent silly buggers._

__

“Get me off,” he snarls.

Jim says “Oh!” silently and then smiles, sharp and wicked. “Alright then,” he concedes, and pushes Sebastian’s boxers down and wraps a hand around his cock.

It doesn’t take him long to come, and after weeks of nothing real his orgasm wrecks him. He moans, panting, face buried against Jim’s neck, his chest heaving. 

“Fuck,” he sighs, grabbing at Jim’s sides, his shirt. He wants to _hold_ , even wouldn’t object to Jim being all corpse-like asleep in his bed again, wants to keep feeling just how real he is, but he won’t, and he doesn’t get to.

Jim pushes him away with a harrumph and reaches for the dumpster, wipes Sebastian’s come off his fingers and onto his jacket and then hands the jacket to him.

Sebastian tucks himself back into his trousers and says, sarcastically, “Thanks so much.”

“Not a problem,” Moriarty responds cheerfully. He rearranges himself, and then strides away from the alley, and clicks his fingers for Sebastian to heel.

At home in their terraced house that no longer feels so empty, as darkness takes over London, Jim tells him where he’s been. “Mycroft Holmes,” he says, his eyes sparkling. “The virgin’s big, scary brother, trying to get me to talk through some very creative methods of his little army. They wanted to know everything that I keep up in my brain, all my secrets… and they hit harder than you do.”

“They tortured you,” Sebastian murmurs, bringing a glass of water to his lips. He’s burning for whisky, but it’s not an option, they’ve nothing in. He rubs his now shaven cheek. It was the first thing Jim insisted upon. 

“They tickled me,” Moriarty responds flatly. “But you know how resilient I can be. So Mycroft Holmes gave me Sherlock’s life, a collection of tales and stories from beginning to end. And now I have what I need to make Humpty Dumpty have a very great fall.”

Sebastian chews the inside of his cheek. He doesn’t like the sound of this, but he says nothing. He doesn’t have opinions when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. In this, he is truly nothing more than a hired gun.

_Do I get to watch you fall as well?_ he wants to say, but he doesn’t, and never will.

“I need to shower,” Sebastian announces, although from the look on Jim’s face he could have left for hours and the man wouldn’t have noticed. He’s smiling, eerie and thin, his eyes unfocused. He’s thinking, dreaming up his grandest scheme yet, Sebastian feels. He’ll be this way for hours, out of Sebastian’s reach.

He stands up and gazes down on Moriarty, who drums his fingers on his thigh and acts as if Sebastian isn’t even in the room. _So this is your grand return._

He starts to walk out of the room. He needs a cigarette.

“Out of curiosity,” Jim calls after him, and Sebastian hesitates in his step, the words prickling down his spine. Jim never asks things _out of curiosity._ “If your blood and flesh isn’t family - who is?” It takes him a moment to place what he’s on about, and then his jaw tightens. Sebastian doesn’t need to turn his head to see the tilt, the smirk on his lips, the sharp teeth and the tongue playing against the edge of them. Jim already knows the answer, and Sebastian won’t give voice to it.

Jim is his employer, yes. His boss. And he’s Sebastian’s encompassing obsession. He’s his father in every derisive remark and his sister in every backhanded compliment, he’s that vicious tiger in bed and the knife on his throat with every fight. His commanding officer in every kill. Moriarty is his enemy, his best friend, his owner, his murderer, his family.

“Goodnight, Jim,” Sebastian says quietly, and he goes up the stairs alone.


	13. A Long Game

Sebastian is feeling less like a treasured rifleman and more like a hired nanny as of late. The task entrusted to him today is to simply watch - there’s no end goal, he’s simply to play the passerby, keep his distance, keep an eye on Moriarty. He’s convinced he serves no purpose here - Moriarty just wants him to be here, simply because he can be here, simply because Moriarty says _jump_ and Sebastian asks _how high_.

He’s not that good at watching for no reason. Sebastian likes to know there’s an end goal. He likes to think he’s not wasting his time. When he’s scoping out an area he knows he’s not wasting his time, he’s searching for the most appropriate vantage point, checking out times and routines. When he’s watching in on a meeting that Moriarty absolutely has to take, he’s aware that his presence helps keep people from thinking that just because Moriarty’s a slight man they can play him. 

Sebastian sees absolutely no reason for him to stand watch and play tourist as Moriarty sets up getting himself arrested. _I know he wants me out of the house,_ Sebastian thinks as he trails Jim at a distance. _But that doesn’t explain why I have to be here._ Sebastian seems to be a non-entity in the eyes of the law. He’s never had trouble, never even been close to trouble. He imagines that Jim wants to keep him from becoming something. He has explicit instructions that upon Moriarty’s arrest he’s to hole up in a hotel _until further instruction,_ and maybe that’s what winds Sebastian up most.

He’s sick to the back teeth of playing sitting duck, waiting for Moriarty to come around one way or another. And yet he does as he’s told regardless, like now, as he hangs back heading up into the tower, making his way through ticket booths and the metal detector that holds up Jim momentarily.

“I’ve never seen the Crown Jewels in person before,” Sebastian says absentmindedly when they’ve crowded into that room. A woman next to him nods appreciatively, smiles and then moves off, and Sebastian rolls his eyes, keeping one eye on Moriarty as he scrolls through his phone.

Ever since Moriarty came back from his little visit to prison or where-ever the fuck the Ice Man stored him, they’ve had business falling through their fingers, slipping through their hands like water. Jim’s not interested. He doesn’t want to consult. He’s barely interested in fucking. He doesn’t want to kill anyone. Sebastian’s last kill was a seventeen year old girl, two weeks ago, some homeless scrounger who Jim had Sebastian carve up in their basement.

“You know,” he’d purred, one finger running along her empty chest cavity, “I’ve always wanted to see exactly what a body looks like without any internal organs, can you believe that I’ve never done it before? I figured I should sooner rather than later, really.” 

Sebastian had been charged with finding a use for her insides whilst Jim rolled up his sleeves, took a scalpel and explored the rest. He’d discovered two very lovely Alsation dogs that really enjoyed diced human organs. “We should get a dog,” he’d suggested upon his return, and Jim had given him a very strange look.

Before Sebastian has really processed any of the room, the alarms go. The lights flash. Sebastian scratches his thigh and leaves, just as everyone else does - everyone who isn’t staff, or Moriarty, anyway.

Hell if he’s going to one hundred percent follow Jim on this shit, though. He isn’t the only civilian to stop and stare, so that’s exactly what he does, blending into the little crowd that gathers for when Jim is hauled out of there smiling. 

A completely futile exercise. Sebastian doesn’t hang around once the police have driven his boss off. He does as he’s told - _what a good little pet I am, fucking christ_ \- and makes for a hotel, choosing himself one comfortably close to the Old Bailey where he knows that Jim’ll end up on trial.

Not too close, though. Staying around places of authority for too long makes Sebastian itch, like he’s going to break out in hives that’ll mark him for a guilty man and they’ll toss him in a dungeon and not let him out. Which is a fate that Jim is going to be avoiding neatly, with any luck.

“You know they’ll probably try and send me to Belmarsh,” Jim had giggled the night before, Sebastian’s nipple teased between his teeth. He _really_ didn’t like that, but when has he ever been in a position to argue with Moriarty? Even if he’d wanted to fight him off, Sebastian had been a little tied up - although sex seemed to be more of an exercise in how best to wind Sebastian up whilst talking utter nonsense.  

Probably to try and distract him from questioning today. Sebastian dumps a bag down on the fifth floor hotel bed and peers out of the window, frowning. He’s weaponless - everything’s stashed somewhere safe - and he can’t even smoke indoors here. It could be any length of time from now till Moriarty’s trial.

_The long game, this is,_ Sebastian thinks, gazing out on the ants of London walking the pavements below, following a double decker that passes through the street with the line of his eyes until it vanishes around a corner. He can make out someone reading a paper in a doorway, and without having to be close he recognizes the cover from breakfast this morning. There’s an article about Sherlock Holmes in there.

_And to think I’m only on the edge of it._ He’s like a reserve, barely a player at all. These every day people have no idea what’s happened today, what has been brewing for a long, long time, what has been building since before the night at the pool. Sebastian huffs, aching for a smoke, and rests his forearm on the window, leaning against it. These people, their fascination with the freak solving crimes for them. They have no idea what’s coming for their hero detective.

Although, for that matter, neither does Sebastian, but he knows this much: he’s due a fall.

And at some kind of cost, he’s certain.


	14. Word Of God

“I should start a scrapbook,” Sebastian tells Jim over the phone, laughing despite himself at the array of headlines before him on a stand of evening newspapers. “How did you pull this one off? Through the televisions, the phones...?” 

He fingers his favourite headline: _THE WORLD’S GREATEST THIEF... ACQUITTED._ Of course Moriarty managed to pull the rug from under everyone’s feet. Sebastian expected nothing less of him, although he won’t pretend there wasn’t a niggling suspicion that Moriarty had planned to send himself to prison only to break himself out. All the same, the world’s only just gotten a brief taster of James Moriarty and what he can do. Considering the magnitude of this alone, Sebastian hopes people are frightened. _Fuck knows they should be._

“Of course it was the televisions. I couldn’t have people _call_ , it needed to be taken seriously,” Moriarty sighs disparagingly down the line at him. Static crackles and Sebastian winces, holding the phone back from his ear for a moment to let it pass. He puts it back to his ear just in time to hear Jim saying, “Saw you outside the Bailey when I left. Standing with all those people. Television people and cameras and fans, the sort who write letters to serial killers. All wanted a piece of me. Do you want a piece of me? You looked very _sexy_ , all suited up and pretending to be a reporter - thank god nobody actually spoke to you, hm? How long has it been, six weeks? A little bit longer?”

“Don’t,” Sebastian says curtly, scratching his jaw. He stares down at a picture of Jim, all smug and smartly dressed in that fitted grey suit. He’s reasonably certain that the hotel staff are getting a little irritated with the mess on the sheets but what’s Sebastian supposed to do? Jerking off in the shower loses its novelty after a while and makes him seem desperately, damnably lonely, which he isn’t. 

At least he’s not in the hotel anymore. He checked out six hours ago, per the instruction personally texted to him. _You can leave now,_ it said. There were three x’s on the end of the message. A personal touch. He’s been spending the day wandering to and fro around London, stopping off in cafes to watch the news and engage in debates on Jim’s acquittal. Really, waiting for the next instruction on what to do. He’s looking forward to being reunited with the job (and his guns). He doesn’t need frustrating in the mean time.

“You’re not even trying to be fun anymore,” Moriarty spits, with all the venom of a child who’s been told he can’t keep burning ants. Sebastian rolls his eyes, pinching the phone between his ear and shoulder and pulling out a tin with a bundle of rolled cigarettes in, fumbling to open it and put one between his lips and light it.

“I’ve been playing silly buggers walking around London waiting for the word of God,” Sebastian retorts sharply, scowling and rolling his shoulders. “Excuse me if I don’t want a fucking hard on whilst waiting for you to decide what to do.” He turns from the stand, ignoring the strange look that the stall hand gives him, and strides down the street, feet slapping the pavement, breathing out a cloud of smoke as he goes.

“Oh, Sebastian,” Jim sighs, all playful again. It’s creepy, how he can do that - sound like he wants to kill you one second and like he’s going to plait your hair the next. It always gives Sebastian a shiver. Mainly because he really doesn’t know what the man’s going to do. “Do calm down. Your instruction is coming.”

Sebastian hesitates, cigarette between his teeth as a four-door car with blacked out windows approaches from down the street. That has to be coincidence. Jim doesn’t _do_ fancy cars, he does taxis and vans and other inconspicuous vehicles that don’t get noticed. He can hear laughter from the phone in his hand, though, and the car pulls to a stop beside him.  

“I thought that might get your attention,” Jim says, winding down one black window, leering out with a grin.

“Jim?” Sebastian says, his voice half warning and half curiosity. _What are you playing at?_

__

“Come on,” Moriarty says cheerfully, opening the door and sliding to the opposite side of the car. “One last little adventure before we go into, ah, hiding for a while.” He giggles, but then his face turns black and he says, “Put the cigarette out before you get in or I’ll put it out on your heart.”

Sebastian resists the urge to give Jim more lip and flicks the cigarette out of his fingers, watching the cherry glow as it arches through the air and then putters out on the pavement. He tucks one long limb into the car and then the other, squashing up inside and twisting until he’s comfortable and can shut the door.

Jim smiles at him, his face a grinning skull in the gloom of the car interior. “I assume you’re _well,_ ” he coos, and Sebastian narrows his eyes at him. Jim rolls his eyes. “Oh, play nicely, Sebastian. Haven’t you missed me?” 

 _Define missed._ “No. I’ve just been bored.”  

A hand smacks him around the face, and it stings, almost pleasantly so. Sebastian resists the urge to leap on Jim right here in the back of the car, but he smiles widely, lets it be known that _Well, I’ve missed that._  

He catches himself for a second, leaning back languidly in a posh car, attentive and subordinate all at once, and wonders for a moment how he came to be here when not all that long ago he was leaning back miserably on a shitty couch without anything he could say he valued.

Whatever it is he thinks of Moriarty, whatever he thinks or feels about them and their way, he values the job and what it’s brought him. Something to _do_ with himself, a purpose in his life - a better purpose than what the army gave him, in actuality, with better and more dangerous sport. His stomach churns, a nervous surge that he can’t quite place. He raps his fingers against his thigh. 

“You’ve clearly forgotten how to behave around me,” Jim mutters sharply, grabbing Sebastian by the chin and clambering into his lap. “Listen,” he says, biting the end of Sebastian’s nose in a ridiculous gesture and wiggling his hips down, “You’re going to have to be parted from your sweet children for a while longer. I’m sure you can manage that. You need to become someone else for me. A boyfriend.”

Sebastian’s brow furrows in confusion, but his boss offers no real explanation, just telling him that, “Playing along is key, you understand. I want to put on a great show. So you have to be - “ he hums, running a finger against his jaw, “less than what you are. I mean, you’re already boring to the point of making me want to fall asleep but you have to be _mind-numbing_ about it. You’ll manage that just fine, I’m sure.”  

“Jim,” Sebastian starts, but his boss just shakes his head and scowls. 

“Don’t talk. Don’t _talk_. For the love of God, just do as you’re damn well told.” He slides off Sebastian’s legs and sighs irritably, resting his feet in his lap instead. Sebastian frowns at him. A punch, a hit, sex, hair pulling - any of those or any combination of those he’s come to expect as the ordinary, but Jim really does look bored, even a little unhappy, his mouth twisted downwards.

“We have to be patient,” he mutters, and now it seems like he’s just talking to himself. Sebastian does as he’s instructed, his gut still twisting in knots as he just sits back and shuts up. He rests a hand on Moriarty’s ankle and gets no reaction. 

Sherlock has shifted things and Sebastian doesn’t like it. He’s been settled into a comfortable lifestyle of unpredictability; the comforting aspect being that he could, in fact, predict the unpredictable. He’d know when he was pushing too far and still be surprised when Moriarty hit him. Now he’s truly uncomfortable, a fish out of water, floundering on the deck only half an inch from toppling back into the sea. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. He just has that awful roiling in his gut.

“Your name is Johnny,” Jim says, and Sebastian turns his head slowly, raising an eyebrow. His boss glances at him, and then down as he pulls his phone from his pocket and starts playing with it. “I’m not out of the closet, but you’re my boyfriend. You ride a motorcycle and we’ve been dating around seven and a half months. I’m an actor.”

He smiles, satisfied with whatever he’s doing on his phone, and folds his hands around it in its lap before he looks at Sebastian and tells him, “I’m Richard.”


	15. The Storyteller

The short of it is that Richard Brook is an annoying, whimpering mess that Sebastian can’t stand but Johnny is hopelessly in love with. The long of it is that Jim’s a frightening genius who’s quite the method actor and Sebastian is expected to play along, meaning that they move into a tiny little apartment above an off license with one bedroom and a two-seater sofa and a cramped double bed and a television with only five channels.

They spend at least a few days getting acclimatized to their roles - well, Sebastian has to work out how to play through his, but Jim… Jim turns into Richard Brook so fast, so tidily that it’s almost believable that he’s an average, boring man who loves Eastenders and does children’s television. 

Sebastian has to adjust to a job. Not his usual sort, but something working in the boozer they live above. He’s got no patience for the public and he’s got a certain distaste for half the wines that get bought in here, but he bites his tongue, and forces himself through the motions of stocking and selling and smiling. 

He rides a motorbike now; an old Honda, bright red with a helmet to match. He doesn’t mind that so much. He thinks he looks like a twat, frankly, but at least he knows how to do this - years back, Sebastian learnt how to ride, even if he didn’t get a license to do so. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Jim’s got him a forged one.

Even their clothes are completely different. John Healy - or Johnny, as Richard affectionately calls him - is a very casual sort, favoring jumpers and cardigans over T-shirts with funny slogans. Richard likes V-necks and he’s fond of cardigans, too. He’s a sweet man, clingy and touchy and utterly devoted to Johnny.

It’s just so difficult to stay in character when Sebastian knows what’s lying under the surface. When Richard leads him to bed by the hand, and they fuck sweetly and gently and Richard kisses him and whispers how much he loves him, Sebastian can’t help but feel like he should tear off his skin. He wants to get to the animal underneath. He knows it’s there. He wants to shed this pretense and find something _real._

After all, Jim is the only person Sebastian’s ever been able to be real with. The only person who has wholly accepted him for who he is, even if only because Jim is so much worse. Sebastian’s pretended his entire life, with women and friends and family, and that’s fine because Sebastian knows there’s nothing under the surface. They provide nothing but hollow social interaction.

Sebastian doesn’t want to pretend with Moriarty. He spent an age letting this man knock down every wall he’s ever built to make himself normal and now… now he has to play sweet and nice, and tell Richard he loves him, and cook breakfast and kiss him kindly on the lips every time they part for work.

He’s missing the feeling of hands around his throat.

Sebastian - sorry, Johnny is there when they go to Kitty Riley’s home. Richard’s nervous, sweating, wringing his hands, and he leans into Johnny for reassurance and warmth. “He’s going to get me,” Richard frets, and John wraps an arm around his shoulder, looking down at him as they walk along the street from where John’s parked the motorcycle.

“He won’t,” Johnny says, squeezing his fingers against Richard’s shoulder. “We’ll tell Kitty everything and then he won’t be _able_ to get you. Everyone’s going to know him for the fraud he is.”

“Do you really think so?” Richard murmurs, nuzzling against Johnny’s chest. “I’m so frightened by it all. He’s been such a terror, for months… making me get arrested… it’s not worth it, none of it is worth it.” 

“I know, babe,” Johnny assures him. “I know. Now just make sure to tell Kitty all that.”

And they do. 

Kitty Riley stares at them in concern and horror, her professional mask slipping as Richard’s composure fractures and Johnny has to hold his boyfriend’s hand just to keep him from crying. When they’re done, she clicks off the recorder and she promises, “We’ll expose this… fraud. I’ll expose him for you. I can promise this the front page.”

She stands, ready to see them out, and asks, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Johnny’s taken by surprise when then, a sad and shaken Richard says, “Can I stay here? Just until the story is broken and over with?” 

Even Kitty’s surprised. She looks between Richard and Johnny, stammering for a response, and Richard elaborates, his eyes wide and filled to the brim with fear. “He knows where I live. I don’t want him to hurt Johnny and I don’t want to stay in a hotel. I don’t - I don’t think - ”

“Of course you can stay,” Kitty says, regaining her confidence and nodding firmly. “Of course you can. He won’t be able to find you here. I can promise you that.”

“Are you sure?” Johnny asks Richard quietly, and Richard nods. 

They kiss on Kitty’s doorstep and Johnny promises, “I’ll bring you some clothes later tonight.”

And then, reluctantly, he leaves, returning to their sad little flat to throw some of Richard’s clothes into a bag. 

Alone, Sebastian lets the persona shatter, groaning unhappily as he stuffs clothing into a bag. They’ve been this for what feels like far too long already. Faking all this emotion with the gnawing urge to reclaim reality is overwhelming and exhausting. It was much easier when he was paid to shoot stuff and not much else.

He hates these clothes. He hates this life. He misses _home_ , with his collection of guns and his suits and the basement filled with torture tools and bad memories. He misses the smell of grape fruit and blood and sex.

He’s been far, far too long without it, and Sebastian’s not a dumb lackey. He knows that building these extensive lives to ruin Sherlock with - they can’t just slip out of them and act as though Richard Brook and John Healy no longer exist. There’s going to have to be complications. He can’t predict how Moriarty will fix this.

When he’s ready to leave a few hours later, when he’s eaten and taken a break and smoked in the back alley and packed things for Richard, he slips back on John Healy’s face and life like an old comfy shirt. He climbs on the motorbike, heading back to Kitty Riley’s home, ready to hand over clothes and see if Richard is feeling alright.

Kitty opens the door and lets him in with an incline of her head and says, “He’s in my spare room.” She gestures. Johnny nods gratefully and goes, hefting the bag with him, and he knocks twice on the door before sliding it open and whispering, “Hey baby. I got your stuff.”

Richard sits up on the bed, tired and frightened, and says, “Hello.”

As soon as the door clicks shut, his face drops and Moriarty emerges from within for the first time in a while, and he says in a low calculated voice, “Kitty’s pushing her story as we speak. I’d say… late tomorrow night, Sherlock is going to be arrested. The story is going to break the morning after that. You’ll need to go to the lock up past Paddington and talk to a very, very nice man by the name of Michael who very dearly loves his children. He’ll give you a bag. With the contents of that bag, follow Sherlock and those who are following him.”

Sebastian takes a moment to process that, and then nods firmly. Jim smiles, snakelike and dangerous, and adds, “Bring your bike. And when it all comes to here… be out front.”

Richard takes hold once more, standing up to collect the bag from Johnny’s hands, leaning up on tip-toes to kiss him lovingly on the mouth. “Thank you, baby. I’m so glad you understand. This will all be over soon. I promise.”


End file.
